JOHNMICHAEL SIMON POETRY

And it’s the same few people

that grace these pages every quarter

their names, their photographs,

their dusty sepia imaginings

 

Sipping their lukewarm soup

words staining tablecloths

diminishing now, not noticing

how clock hands tick inexorably

towards the place where they too

 

Will take their positions

inside the black outlined sections

somewhere at the beginning

or the end of another edition

 

Meanwhile a few recycled thoughts

and stanzas, brush shoulders with

quick-stepped commuters whose folded

newspapers glare out the latest lurid

headlines, red, black and yellow phrases

 

Who couldn’t give a hoot

for lovers of Yeats and Dylan Thomas

 

You observe them, dropping off

one-by-one, scratching reminiscences

into old fashioned notebooks

sitting inconspicuously in window seats

watching life and poetry go by

and suddenly you realize they’re

not there anymore – perhaps they got off

at Puddlebridge while you were doing

the ten minute crossword puzzle