I Travel

 

I Travel

 

 

Chacewater garden centre,

plants its mark on visitors,

who are mostly old.

Sipping tea, chewing scones

of gritty currants, dollop of cream,

jam – cherry, maybe

more likely raspberry,

excavated from the wholesale tin.

Spit seeds from gapped teeth

where they lodge like squatters,

dab tissues on dribbles like blotters.

Some have a partner oppositting,

perhaps there’s a little talking –

sometimes silence because they say

when you know somebody so well,

conversation gets in the way.

My septuagenarian neighbour, Kevin,

clatters metal buckets of weeds,

uprooting daily those unpleasing

thickets of intruders seeding

on his four square bit of green.

From my window his constant noise

is sometimes ignored,

and sometimes annoys –

often inoffensive, but makes me think

of other plots, days gone down

where we’re younger - it stinks

to have me around, he thinks

and he longs for the days I travel.

But here’s where it ends,

bent backs, pots and pails.

Today, I’m on Artemis, out sailing,

tacking across Carrick Roads,

maybe St Mawes, who knows?

Depends on where the winds will blow,

I’m ten years behind him,

in no hurry to rattle my tin

but know, in my heart, it’s coming.

Maybe, nations are only people –

they want to travel too

with views that may be strange,

but they’re views all the same

and we’ll mistrust our sight

as they waive your right

to cultivate, border and contain.

Within our minds

travels each and every state

to be explored with furrowed thought,

and destination is only            

what a planted life has brought.