Time over distance

I

A far-off meeting means an early start,
Up in the dark, breakfasting in silence,
While upstairs the children snore and murmur.

The car pulls out onto the empty street
Reflecting the orange glow of streetlights
On the tarmac moist with an early dew

I leave the village wrapped in night
But soon enough as I drive on,
Day calls forth its usual signs

Bleary paper boys tote their heavy loads
Leaning to counterbalance dense masses of newsprint;
Milk vans drive, in fits and starts

As night edges into definite morning
The pavements fill with schoolward groups
Straggling wayward distracted knots

Then they clear as everyone
With any specific place to be
Has gone there, leaving the day

To those whose time is less constrained
With room for choices, and room
To choose none if they wish

Paucity of options is perhaps implied
By the popularity of bench-sitting
Dog-walking and weeding


II

Duty done, words said and heard
I return, rolling back the sequence
But not the time: it hurries on

So I catch glimpses of the gleeful rush
As the school bell releases its flood
And then the grimmer, sadder faces

Of drivers worn down by their toil
Ready for time they can call theirs
And then the streetlights flicker

Angry red bulbs burning away
The ashes of the day; it's dark again
By the time I reach my home

Curtains shut tight against the world;
I hear the bath-time shrieks
And a spectrum of electric noise


III

Places are the same, really;
Similar things happen everywhere, at least:
Work, sleep, school;

What marks out our special ones
Is just who lives there;
It is too much to hope

That anything we devise is new;
But ordinary life, ordinary love
Will suffice.


Martin Locock, 2003