Car park’s dead, bottle banks castle corners,
rain shuffles across empty spaces.

Shopping trolleys block Safeway’s exit,
mongrels sniff for action,
high tail it behind the Co-op.

The security man adores TV,
knowing the hours he’ll not live.

Then they arrive! Wearing rainbows
accuse grey,
from a world where melancholia is banned,
minor keys forcibly discouraged,
laughter, optimism obligatory.

Dog can’t believe its luck-
reversed and made a God!

They begin to dance, bang drums,
outrageous coloured costumes,
flattering air,
play violins, guitars, such joyful music-
shopping trolleys clapping
a synchronised beat.

This transcendental moment evaporates,
the dog witnessed events,
his tail’s unreliable.

The security man lost in a DVD,
the rest, us, too busy
watching rain attacking empty spaces.

Tom Kelly

The poems will feature in The Night Shift

Edited by Michael Baron, Andy Croft
& Jenny Swann

ISBN: 978-190551258 , 160 pages
£9.99

From Five Leaves Press
http://www.fiveleaves.co.uk/index.html

To be published in November 2008

The poem stems from a memory of being in a Jarrow car park many years ago. I wrote it fairly recently but the memory pre-dates Methuselah.
It is now a Morrisons. That’s progress for you. I can’t recall why I was there.