Border Poems
By Stuart Cooke
1.
People at the Bus Shelter; Raining
Trapped under the bus shelter,
the rain rushes down
around us in the thick bars of a cage,
liquid shot pummelling the pavement
from endless silver sheaths.
Some sit on the bench; most stand, our hands
kept warm in our pockets.
We are all
obsessed with this natural demarcation,
this exact, powerful enclosure of
dry pavement by a violent downpour,
this luck we seem to have stumbled upon,
to be inhabiting the last habitat
in a world apparently drowning.
From the bench of the shelter
the outside world smudges
slightly,
smudges downwards with streaks of rain
so that it would be foolish - utterly
absurd - to venture out there
(who would walk
into a world that has run like ink down a page?).
Until the bus comes
we are an enforced community.