Car Park And Brick Walls Poem by smee steve

And his thoughts became of surf and shingle

Of golden stone buildings and long shadows

Of blue painted restaurants on the corners of steep streets

And an old library crammed with books

In between offices and shops

Echoes along the narrow roads lined with chocolate-box coloured homes

Rock pools before the returning tide and lumps of green lawn among castellated ruins

Her being close

And her smile

He remembered her nearness as they peered over the iron railings

Down into those pools on the dry, grey granite below

He remembered the sea gull that stared back at the happiness in his eyes as they sat on the bench near the pier among the fish-and-chip eating holiday goers

He still had the flat, grey pebbles he had collected on the beach over the hill to the north Where he almost lost the car keys in his enthusiasm to pick the right ones

from the multitude of other flat, grey pebbles

But she coloured his mind and gave him joy

He remembered he felt so good when she was close

The evening of that day of late – very late – summer throbbed in his memory

He wished he could have lived there

Stayed there

To have had the sea as a neighbour

To smell the scent of the waves and the spray

And be in the shadow of the mountain at morning

She had been near to him for a long time that day

Sitting next to him in the car as he drove

Westwards over the narrow, up-and-down roads

And sitting opposite him in the empty café

Mugs of tea between them

But he had been too frightened to touch her

Almost too frightened to speak

He had been scared to open his heart fully in case she took it away

Because he would have given it to her

He wondered how much she already had his heart

Her scent still filled his memory

And the his loneliness idled on empty



© </>