Rugby Reunion

~

the morning is coming up and

gradually like am-dram footlights

pale streaks begin to bleed

dimly through the flowering cherry,

it’s 4am and across two gardens

next door’s cinema screen sized

television still flickers through a film

looks like he’s gone to sleep in the chair again,

why I’m sitting at the kitchen table

like a condemned man, only a mug of tea 

and a blank page for company

heaven only knows,

I can’t even blame the pigeons, 

all of which are hunkered down 

out of this mean inconsistent wind,

I had woken up from a dream 

about Rugby (town not game) 

the people, old colleagues and neighbours

we’ve not seen for forty years, and was

wondering if they ever thought of us

who emigrated south,

not being a smoker, rather strangely I

warmly remember the triangular tobacco shop 

perched at the confluence of two narrow streets,

and the children’s favourite the cattle market, 

both now long gone,

we discovered our son’s colour blindness

in the park there, evidently baked beans 

were the same colour as its green bandstand,

it was our first house

we were very happy there

*

© Graham R Sherwood 07/23