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.