WILLIAM G MARSHALL
Commended - 2024 Tower Poetry Competition, 'Mirror'
Driving Lessons To Reflect On
Here my lesson arrives – a time capsule – passing
time zone ends. A little lot parked for a little switcheroo:
a back-seater I was, finger-painting doodles on rolled
down windows of my breath, alive as a still-life.
A latchkey kid I was, left airtight, clutched on tenter-
hooks the key dangles from, echoing, I am my own.
Tell me and show me how, questioning the highway code
jargon – signs hint \\\ we’re nearly \\ close to \ childhood ends.
‘Your peripheral vision is not that of a woman’, my instructor remarked.
I am blinkers-sighted, my introversion beyond the familiar;
for looking over shoulders, crept a lost child that I was –
not even orange flashes noticed of any indications.
I am my own examiner. I am blocked on the verges of a river.
Oh my tender eyes only sense a nostalgia,
to a town that is becoming a ghost.
– MIRRORS – SIGNAL – POSITION – SPEED – LOOK –
Bobbling heads of eye floaters out my orbit, mirror checks:
dogwalkers leashed to chasing tails – tailgating again, about
two seconds; the roadmen run the streets to make ends meet;
the music addicts plugged in, ringing out invisible tannoys.
‘Puddles can hide shards of glass’, my instructor advised.
My foregone family road trips of Scotland, fractured, my homeland:
wildlife is overgrowing, water bursting banks, barren highlands;
for long-lived shepherds, now, who is there to follow?
Homesick, or is it travel sickness. Solitude must be sick
of me, like a ship in a bottle, marooned in my childhood
dwelling on the message in the bottle: you Captain, must break free.
– MIRRORS – SIGNAL – POSITION – SPEED – LOOK –
Until family crossed over – at that zebra crossing – grey area.
Hit those potholes like mosh pits, a deathly grip on clenching fists –
the mime act of my father’s mechanic palms, pulling out hard shoulders.
Roundabouts engulf me in a whirlpool, just stifling for an exit – the late
times, my granny drove straight through the chevrons – the last Hail Mary.
That stagecoach pulling over at the stop, picking up and dropping off –
gave way to my mother lifting us, hitchhikers, squeezing off her hand-brake.
Upon reflections, driving by with mirrors aligned –
my family panorama, chasing the light, shrivelling
flickers of an embodiment of me – zooming – to one portrait.
Driving by, dividing, my home free-falling – out of its frame.
Unwavering, overhead lines flapped like hammocks,
pylons nested to flocks that imitate me in my rear view mirror;
dropping – pins on – the end – of the – atlas.