Public Transport

Traffic stacked back up the hill;

the flash photography of sun

on rain- glossed pavements.

I am travelling incognito,

reading a book I have re-titled

‘Do Not Disturb’.

Still a voice drags me off the page,

out of Carver’s ‘Afghanistan’,

it’s demanding

‘Which stop is it for the bus station?

I’ve got to get to Nottingham

or some place miles from here!’

I force myself to answer

‘I think it’s the one after next’,

and then, because I feel I have to,

 ‘my sister lives near there’,

but he’s screaming ‘I’m leaving before I kill her

or she kills me!’

Beyond the mirrored windscreens

starving Gothic arches roar

above the Portakabins

On College Green

A camera crew is waiting

For news to happen

While the bus trundles

inexorably

towards our stops.

© Deborah Harvey

From Collage: The Best of Poetry Space 2010 and one of the runners up in Poetry Space Competition 2010, judged by Philip Lyons