SNARL-UP ON THE A128

Eventually things will change

On this narrow overworked road.

In April there is always a tractor load

Of chopped logs and the strange

Slow convoy of vehicles, snorting

At the trailer’s rear.

But the seasons, also predictable,

Travel with ease, unhindered

By men and their cluttered

Lives; Spring leading small

Children by the hand and revealing

The Summer fields.

Showing them that here, for a time,

Is youth. Where mistakes, easily made,

Are quickly erased; where the old are laid,

Creaking with error, unable to climb

Through the altering jungle

Of new ideas.

Possibly this, an immobile invitation

To an Essex day,

Will become the perfect memory.

Dry leaves of old Autumn on

The moist young grass, lying

Like dead Romeos,

Under balconies of flowering cherries,

Over generous in a blush of pink, waving

And curtsying to birds who, perching

And searching like desperate memories,

Examine without hope the brief forever

Of petalled faces.

Derrick Gaskin