Tidal

Numbed by the sheer fucking hell and carnage
All over the news, the dizzying swathes of
Devastation, the untold people missing dead.
A million tiny pockets of paradise swept away
Forever, islands shifted, lost and drowned.
The earth rocked on her axis, and whole worlds have collapsed.

I’m sitting quietly under a railway arch
Staring at soft wet brown stone
And feather-flecked netting
To keep the pigeons at bay.
It’s been raining in suburbia
But the locals are busy texting and
Don’t seem to care.

A grey train takes me into London
Past the backside of garden sheds and
Streets where people put their bins out,
Winter Poplars, white graffiti,
Towards the cranes and Tower Bridge.

There’s a pain in my gut
When I think of those big families
With their faces and their fights
And their grinning group photos,
Whilst I batter down with fists
On stone decisions I have made.