A Morning Walk

The sky is dark, grey and wet,

and the roads are the same,

as we set off into town;

Don, to the job he isn’t longing for,

Mary (she goes on her Honda 50)

to the job she is used to,

and me, to the house I didn’t stay at last night

(I slept the night on their sofa,

after clearing away biscuit crumbs,

and fragments of a glass thrown in that direction

which no-one had bothered to clean up).

We get onto the main road,

quite a few cars around already,

and Don just misses his bus.

“Bastard!

He saw me!

Christ, if I had a clod

I’d throw it through his window!

Bastard!”

So we walk into town,

up Constitution Hill’s winding

asphalt pathways

(“Beaten paths are for beaten men”

somebody once said.

There are lots of people on the streets now,

most of them look well thrashed).

The street lights blink out

and the sky is suddenly

much more important.

We’re in Queen Street now;

in a couple of hours this long, dark canyon

will yawn into a peculiar

artificial life of its own,

and the winter sun (not yet visible)

may even shed some light there.

Don catches his bus at last

and I carry on alone,

still thinking about all those beaten men.

It starts to drizzle

so I pull up the hood of my parka

and look for a break in the cloud

(there always is one –

if you’re willing to look hard enough,

and wait long enough).

Sure enough

by the time I reach

the Hopetoun Street overpass

the golden-orange sun has found its way

through a moth-hole

in the grey curtain

and is smiling palely

at whosoever cares to notice.

I have to stop for a minute

to lean on the railing

and look at it.

The traffic speeds on

over the humped bridge

just the same as it always does.

Now I’m in Ponsonby;

more people, more noise,

more movement than ever.

But it all seems a little easier now,

as the sun grows whiter,

and the sky becomes bluer by the minute,

and I slosh through ankle-deep puddles

on the pitted pavement,

watching the diminishing clouds

floating before me

on the wet mirror surface,

and listening to the ‘CROSS NOW’ buzzers

and the morning choruses of the birds.

And I think about beaten men,

and having breakfast,

and writing this down.

(1975)