shopping for poems

Something I've discovered about writing a poem a day, is how little room it leaves for anything else. Like a beagle, my mind persists in attaching itself to and following anything that has even a hint of poetic material. The whole day starts to turn itself into a poem. I really must try to stop, it's driving me a little crazy. Thankfully I feel the yen for a landscape poem ... which gives me the perfect excuse to head out of town sometime before this month is over.

***

shopping second-hand

Time mocks me as it slides by

turning memories only five years old

into sentiment. Like how I miss

certain people, now gone from this place

with no chance any more

of bumping into them down town.

In the cleanest Public Toilets

I look at myself in the mirror, afraid

that what I see isn't the real me,

or alternatively, is an only too-real

reflection of someone shopping alone.

Too long spent tumbling

your own unspoken thoughts

will drive you crazy in the end.

It's no wonder lonely people

cry out suddenly or wave to strange cars

and buses when they cross at the lights.

To get the bus home I happily retreat

from designer-frontages, clever windows,

to dog-eared Rattray Street,

a detour to Stafford's SaveMart,

where pretension is a foreign concept

and friends take cheerful intakes of breath

at surprise finds, “Do I look good in this?”

Where I am content

among the smell of other people

and no longer have to try.

I know where these people are coming from

and why they stay. I feel myself relax

into a ball of happy plasma.

Kay McKenziee Cooke