Good Friday, 2013: Driving Westwards
On this shared road westwards
where Donne thought deep into faith,
the car kicks down a gear and the
A5 unspools its tune like ferric tape,
the tyres’ slow hymn on tarmac,
perhaps I dare to think of hope;
on the cusp of winter’s long tenancy
wondering if, when, spring come again;
if, after this austere new ice age,
we can ever know what’s really been lost.

The Roman road’s shattered spine
now arches through a wayside hinterland;
small towns pick-pocketing each other,
stripped of their old callings and clinging
to name alone; the setting sun shatters
between pylon and gantry, local colour
bled out into warehousing valleys,
artics shunting a service economy
from hub to hub, supplying demand
in a strategically-decommissioned landscape.

Into the westerly sunset – at Donne’s back
the weight of imagery, of blood and thorns,
he almost dared not to turn…