The 144 to Birmingham took twenty years

to burgeon from a blemish on the horizon

to the finish of the marathon. She promised

me I’d catch it, and waiting is a hard habit

to stop, unlike this Midland Red bus that plods

at funeral carriage pace. Of all the days

in all the Mays she dies upon the hottest -

always inapposite: mini – skirted in her forties,

wearing high-heels and stockings;

she had the legs. By the time I get to Droitwich,

Saturday stings my eyelids, squinting at shiny

shoppers, at flowers wrapped in plastic, the tussle

for parking spaces and the insouciance of swans.

I’ve exhausted the deposit of fond memories

by Longbridge and grimly disinter our final visit.

The Tories just defeated; double glazing’s

being fitted; these kiddies have been messed with

and the bastards should be strung up by the ends

of their expletives; the country is going backwards

to the wogs, the blacks, the niggers, even the weather’s

being changed to suit their pigment. So colourful,

she sniggered: Handsworth, Balsall Heath and Smethwick,

overrun by weed and reggae, curries and chapattis.

All the stuff she’d kept a lid on leapt out hissing.

I was embarrassed for my missus and our lasses,

taught to view the world, I s’pose, through rose-tinted glasses:

we left with bad excuses. Now the axis

of the white working classes has departed:

plunging from the mirror, to the sun,

to the star, then outer darkness.