Drax

 Drax

In Dobson’s head, it’s stubborn flat -

inappropriately so, from Snaith

by Carlton, all the way to Drax -

although he didn’t get to know

it that well, being forever ringed

by ripped down shredded fences

of some sort of adolescence –

flat for miles: rivers, dykes, lakes,

arrow straight country lanes,

with the ripening strawberry fields

where he could make a bob

or two upon effecting escape -

and an apple tree shedding fruit

as if futures depended on it.

Roads that divided, stretched

fingers that might seize him yet,

he’d cycle without raising thirst

out to Selby, Goole, Temple Hirst.

But, most of all, those cooling towers -

pregnant concave structures

that bulged and billowed steam

rising into far flung dreams;

those schemes not tasted yet.

Oh, how he would like to forget,

but its power haunts him nights

and, just before that first flight,

early mornings spent impatient

upon his very last school buses.

Dobson would hear his curses

long before he appeared

flat capped, ancient, his bike tyres

swearing weird words in odd time

to his slow pedalled grind,

like a millstone to strop knives.

On his way to Drax, perhaps,

but no way to know what chance

rutted lanes his life had chosen -

as Winter approached, more frozen

by the day, but peddling still,

as water pushes onwards the wheel.

Drax’s lungs long exhaled its last,

and what remains of that past,

those concrete cornered prospects

built high to stand eternal

that now litter flat plains with stone

before Dobson shut gates to roam?