There's a postcard on the mantle.
Where did they get to this time?
Egypt - They're cruising the Nile,
touring temples, pyramids, tombs.
They've come a long way from Blackpool.
They won't see the tower.
Will the pharoahs mind?
There treasures picked millenia ago,
deprived of their worldly needs
for a market in plunder.
Still there won't be a space for my charriot.
I don't expect to cross the Styx
or see Akenaton's face.
Postcards don't give you the smells and sounds,
the moments effect of light and dark,
the lift in spirits as you gaze on each new view,
the urge to closely observe.
Why go to this broken landscape
to claim you've been there you've lived
to add the graffiti of your presence to these precise hieroglyphs
to see an unusual land that's been usual for centuries past?
It's Blackpool by the sea for me.