A Day Out
 
Scraping £20 from the bottom of my bank account,
I scurry my car up to London
encourage you to skive off nagging job applications
and we dive into Deptford high street.
After cosy Canterbury,
this is a foreign country.
Tipsy with laughter,
you bundle me past siren pound shops,
we hold our noses at the fish mongers’ open drain stench,
I stamp my stilettos outside
the pie and mash shop,
until Alright we can have lunch here.
Afterwards, tramping your personal ordnance survey map;
piratical skull and crossbones grinning
down on us from church gates,
the Thames observed from a  bleak wharf
where Marlow might have been jumped.
A hasty I’ll be in touch
as the school mistress satnav starts up,
glancing back at your windmill wave,
I suppose some peoples’ lives are like this everyday.

Fiona Sinclair


If you have any comments on this poem,  Fiona Sinclair would be pleased to hear them.