Poem

It’s just about to rain
as dust blows across the building site
I can see from this cafe window
where they are building a new shopping centre.

You are late or it feels like you are
because it is just about to rain
as a mechanical digger
drops some earth into a skip.

Ally May

A snowy day

Beside the slow moving traffic on Old Durham Road,

a man in a brown cord coat’s getting out

of a beige Ford Granada, is thumping

his boots on packed down snow.

“I know you think my singings out of tune

but it makes me money”, is playing on the radio.

A blizzard is on its way, frost, is like the veins on a leaf,

Snow is banked like clouds in the cheek burning cold.

On the back seat of a green Vauxhall Victor

a child thinks about ‘The Herbs’.

The traffic at a standstill, fumes from exhaust pipes

making the world opaque.

Ally May