By Peter Robinson.
Stuck in traffic, the Mercedes taxi
still beside a bus stop
with some moments’ poor reception
before an easeful, baroque music’s
re-tuned on the radio,
that’s when my softly spoken driver
was saying ‘He’s just given up’
about this man we see.
The oddly swollen belly
bursting through a too tight shirt
and the flies undone,
he’s munching at a takeaway
in our blustery afternoon
of scurried clouds and sun …
But though we were soon moving on
towards the rail station
it’s him who starts our conversation,
our seeing eye to eye
about just why he’s given up,
given up to the passing day …
♦
Peter Robinson‘s most recent collection of poems is The Returning Sky (Shearsman Books), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation in 2012. In 2013 he published Foreigners, Drunks and Babies: Eleven Stories
Portfolio: This is one of six new poems published in June 2013 in the Fortnightly Review.
