My poetry: Boundary Road 6:15pm

The wind cuts down the high street

Slabs of grey terrace houses wince.

I feel it burn my ears,

I pull the coat’s collars closer

To my peeling neck

To protect against the winter

Which fills my bones like a bad dream.

Hid beneath the iron confines

Of England’s sky

I’ve not seen the sun in weeks:

Day being just another shade of night.

I watch a woman play piano in a blank room

Over a kabab shop,

I imagine her fingers finding

Dark Germanic notes, though

I hear nothing but cars bustle past

And sirens serenade the evening.

This town is not built for beauty,

Too cloaked in the shadow of the docks

Which even when the sun shines

Casts a shadow seven generations long

Across the cracked pavements

And stale pubs

Filled with 5pm drinkers

Lined up like dominoes, nowhere to fall.

Above the bookies a woman paces the room

Clothes hung like curtains,

Slowly drying in the window,

Guess she thinks the sun will return

One day,

Optimism a virtue on this street

Where the wind blows

But the times never change.

This is the sister poem to Boundary Road 11.15am. You can read it here: http://paulcromptonpoetry.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/my-poetry-boundary-road-1115am.html