Why I gave up success so I could see the sea

The old woman told me

Age assumed, for her mouth pressed

The words together like embrace.

Today people keep them typed

-         And spaced

She would speak, then smile, then speak again

I look for eyes as if they’re dead.

Then curled her legs and slowly sighed

And took cold tea on the broken train

Still going of course, as everything does

But the morning was sold, and nobody spoke.

Forcing looking up into something held

Scrolling strangers rather than life in the next seat

Where the old woman turned and said

Why I gave up success so I could see the sea…

A screen flickered in the aisle (a reminder of what was to come)

It was corporate, we lived for time, she said

And now I’m seen as its end, and a sloping mind

You know why a clock has hands; they are sticks for the drum.

There was no question, stopping in London at 5 am

Though ‘stopping’ only expression, as everyone swamped

Through that single aisle and into the station

Everyone busy, nobody spoke.

Beside the old times she addressed like a caution

The streets were still darkened, I offered my coat

In the form of an arm which is she took like a service

Hearing the opening of darkness on Portobello Road

No voices, but the coughs and the ticking

Of unfolding tables, those cold wooden chests

Thrusts forwards, too early to be ‘market’, they saw us

Presumed, bound by blood, or a trouble, a threat.

Yet holding the arm, in the street once called a stranger

I saw her to the door of the corner shop

The metal cold in my pocket but the story beyond it

To see the sea, was to see – to be looking up.