The air-con overhead
drowns out, not enough,
the couple on a date
next to me. His jeans have gathered fluff,
dried in a dryer, crinkled and in-a-rush.
Her shoes are clean though under the table
he doesn’t, and will not, notice,
the closest he’ll come to seeing them is
maybe on a bedroom floor in a month
or maybe two, maybe more if this coffee
date goes askew,
but for time being they gaze, stare
at one another whilst talking:
his plan is to set up an online outreach program,
take the money and run,
hers, to stay in education, an MA
in Creation Research, read and wait,
sit for Judgement Day.

Whatever is coming out from the chimneys
is catching the light in the distance,
it trails across the auburn tree tops that are
shedding autumn and getting ready for
the already-here winter,
then flails and falls down.

The train carries on
as does the couple next to me,
they're on about
what they've done and achieved in Leeds
throughout the day;
they paid for a first class carriage
but ended up in carriage C next to me.

Warmth is a jumper,
a knitted, sewn and cross stitched bunker
in which we exist and sweat in, let out sighs of
I am okay or  I'm always this upset,
and behind those patterns we see the world
through a window the size of a pea, an out-of-focus
key hole where we can watch and wait
and be warm in the thought that
we've no work tomorrow.

Warmth is a blanket on a bed,
a mass produced widespread piece of material
in which we can dive under and have serial sleeps
that carry on into the evening;
and the light coming in through the wide window
hits the Hiroshima shadow-damp on the side wall
making it dance with the commuting-home-traffic.

Market square died down this afternoon,
the day of trading over and over all too soon;
and the now the trolleys have been left out,
lights left on waiting for those customers to come again.

They'll hurry into their jumpers the traders and customers of tomorrow,
weather'll kick up and run up the coast in a rainy fuss.

Temporary clad walls that are there all year round
are dressed up from the ground every day, tied at the ear
of the frames that hang over corridor of cobbles,
scuffed with the muck from Armani plimsolls
and the heels of this week's Alexander McQueens.

*When the rain comes trading will cease and
they'll flick out their notepads to calculate this month's lease.

The Cam passes through
behind a chain hotel belonging to the Hilton
with its lights always on, a 24 hour midnight sun,
that lasts all day until a power cut comes along
and covers bedroom maids, halfway through a job,
in complete silence.

And home I go, slight lightening in the distance and
the road remains long, bending only once
and carrying on straight thereafter
mounting another road heading south until it meets no more ground,
except a bridge over a mouth of a river leading
to somewhere safer than here ever was.

My coat's corners misses your hand
and no expanse of green, mountainous land
could ever be sold or swapped for it.