You open the quarter-lights, get out of the car.
‘Five minutes’ you say ‘and while I’m gone,
look for five unusual things’. And I’m alone
on a back street of workshops and offices.
No-one appears. There are no balloons,
no burglaries. Nothing disturbs the street.
Two thirds up the warehouse wall
the brick course swivels ninety degrees,
three fanciful rows and then back
to a sensible horizontal.
I breathe on the window, draw a face
that fades with the clearing mist,
breathe again and it reappears.
Years later, when you’ve been gone forever,
seeing a sign for invisible menders,
I say for you, ‘you don’t see many of those.’
(published in The North, Dec 2014)
Kathy Pimlott grew up in Nottingham but has lived in London for the last forty years, most of that time in Seven Dials, where she manages public realm projects. Her poems have appeared in magazines, anthologies and on-line and her pamphlet, Goose Fair Night (Emma Press), is due out in March 2016. She was one of the Poetry Trust’s 2015 Aldeburgh Eight.
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