It is with a dust-shod shade of grey,
that I leave the terminus late of day.
A weak filtered light flickers then dies,
plunging to shadow the blue of the sky.
For this is a town with nowhere to go,
where hope and ambition expands and flows
through the hub of a pricey all-girl’s school,
with the private use of a swimming pool.
For this is a town fed on cheap fast food
and the shady thrills of the gambling hall,
where even estate agents sit and brood
as their pictures glare out shabby and small.
It’s as if hope died at the end of the line,
where even the stones of the old church pine,
and shocked at the greying suburban sprawl,
send headstones tumbling to the bearing wall.
Then askew and ragged like old men’s teeth,
standing sentinel to the path beneath,
roses thrust fecundity, pinks and reds,
from the richest loam of embodied beds.
Then office girls saunter with skirts cut high,
and chattering voices – unseeing eye,
they think amorous thought of love and men
and how tonight, they might love once again…