In town, in Woolworth's
10 am, not too crowded
Pepsi-brite colours
Cheap pop tunes
In plastic packets
Smiles in the aisles
Of the popcorn, head tube reality.

Beneath your feet
Scuffed beige floor tiles
Shoe rubbed by happy shoppers
Beneath them, concrete foundations
Laid in the fifties
By poorly paid Irishmen
Who could still remember fighting in the war.

Even lower, a few broken bricks
Blackened, blooded
Haunted by the shocked voices
Of the maimed, the trapped
The burned, the dying:
Prayers, curses, sudden warnings
Explosions in falling darkeness.

Beneath this smoky tide,
What you might call mud - not clay, silt
From the reedside lakebed.
Waters turning, snipe drumming
Dragon-wing, beetle bright
Reed warbler hiding place
For the hunter in his canoe.

Wind rush rustle settles
Three for the price of one, forgotten
Eddy, current, wave-lap
Mud smell, suddenly unclouded sun
A deep breath, a sudden move
Another explosion!
A whirl of wings -
Thousands of them darken the sky.

The people have taken oaks
From the Wild Wood -
Cut free, uprooted, tooled
& awkwardly at first
Replanted in the mud,
In rows - an avenue
Upon the water.

Track it down
From the red sandstone hill
With its springs & its scrub
Out from the bank
Out over wave-lap
Like a bird watchers walkway-
Wedding road for the Lord of the Land.

Circumnambulating
Coventry's circular market
Comparing the prices of
Tomatoes, potatoes, chillis -
Way back, below &
Crannog! Thatched hall,
Smoke slowly drifting.

So I sing my song
Unthreatened by the gold
Around their necks
& the creak of dark, blooded leather
Then they bang the handles
Of knives upon the table
Of the king who sits upon the water.

Barry Patterson, July 2004.

Published in Sherb: new urban writing from Coventry, Heaven Tree Press 2006