Page 22 - POTB Issue 11
P. 22
Missing
I hadn’t seen you around for a while.
Our baker in the local supermarket
said she spoke to you last Tuesday.
I asked the shopping trollies in the car park.
I asked a tourist taking a photograph.
I saw no sign of you in the bus shelter
but spotted a cigarette butt, the type you smoke.
I even clambered down on to the beach
and spoke to the seals, who said
you hadn’t fed them in a couple of days.
I searched all around town, street by street.
Talking to a bricklayer who had run out of cement
a nurse who had forgotten to wash her hands
and some children
who didn’t know how to use the swings.
I climbed on roof-tops and looked from chimney-pots.
Searched down storm drains
and hunted beneath rotten piers.
I looked everywhere …until ten minutes ago
I spoke to a gardener who remembered you
smelling his roses yesterday.
James Andrew sinclair
20 Pushing Out the Boat 11