Cars

A red truck climbs a bend in the distant road

A man in a yellow vest unloads bubble wrap bulk from a white van in the car park

Closer, a small blue saloon stands still in a disabled bay

A grey-haired man at the wheel

I think he’s reading

Standing cars don’t wobble or emit exhaust fumes anymore

Out of earshot you can’t tell whether engines are running

Swallows dive

A woman in a long coat with orange shoulder patches, her hair combed down and parted in the middle, walks toward the ATM

A young black man carries milk under his arm

An old man in a windcheater, flat cap and brown slacks makes slowly and with purpose toward the store, dwarfed by the industrial size of modern things

The martial architecture

More cars arrive

A fast blue one high on its haunches 

One of no definite colour, just reflecting leaves and sky, with ladders on the roof not sun

Ah! Now I see exhaust fumes and a rattling chassis. A black fiat. An open door. The driver out and up front, scraping the screen for ice 

How the winter falls fast up north

In politics, they sacked the minister for seasons. Cut backs.

Autumn got cancelled. Or from the looks of it, frozen 

No longer tracking the base interest rate 

Autumn, like blue collar salaries, out in the cold 

I sit close up against the mighty pane 

Lit-window exposure. Alone with everything 

Two blokes on the back bench and Florie poised behind the counter

Coffee in the urn

Neat squares of silence beat sequentially

Vast empty spaces

Cavernous retail minimalism

We are window dressing

Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks 

Not quite in the day 

Perched on a threshold

Both connected to and severed from the world by the same old see-through walls

Prison guard disguised as a friend from home

Never quite in the game

Performing not being

Like cars

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