Posted in Passages

Full Circle

Posted on by tq1695

Smoking was king
and queen during my growing up.
Our house was unusual,
two parents neither of whom did :
movie theatres,
shopping malls,
buses, trains, aircraft,
open, welcome, extolled. Except school pupils –
forbidden – underground – behind the bike sheds.

At the shopping mall
I was unlocking my bike
and the man guessed to be in his late fifties
was smoking
“ look,”
he said, waving the glowing tip
“ 45 years later, and I’m back where I started,
smoking behind the bike sheds.”

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Author:

Most of my life has been spent on the bench, occasionally called into the game by extravagance or attenuation. Waiting has turned a loner into a recorder - nondescript and inconsequential, more not noticed than overlooked - the non-vantage point of children not yet considered old enough to understand. Orphaned Islands (Un)poetry is a lifetime of picking anecdotes up and not throwing them away. Stories collected like odds and ends placed in a box in the basement, the garage, the garden shed - uncertain as to what their use might be but knowing that one day there might be one.