The Starbeck Orion #1

A Feast of Images And Words

Part three of twenty-five bites

Tony Noon

LAYING OUT THE LOST WORLDS
 
A siren adds depth to a grey wash
of market stalls where the ages meet.
Songs scratched on cheap paper
share space with  plates, and tin pans.
 
Blistered hands blown on to shoo the cold.
They tell you time goes slow ; no one buys,
but their world turns .The clock will push them,
back into boxes, into vans and sheds, and later
they will start again. Laying out the lost worlds.
 
Hoping for a sunrise.

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RIVER
 
The Sally Army hall is an ossuary
for lifeless clothes and other remnants.
The fast food of a sound bite age.
 
The faithful are long departed.
No fight to fight here anymore, but
up the hill there are still catholics.
 
By-passing both a river of souls,
caught up in their own versions.
Believing at least in family and in self.

TABLE SERVICE
 
He does not wait on tables.
He waits for them.
Each morning they are dealt
around this uneven lot like
poker hands waiting to bluff.
 
He adjusts them , tilts chairs
after rain but most of all
he resents the people who sit
and while away mornings.
He is only really happy when
 
the tables can be locked away.

Tony Noon

lives in Mexborough. He never met Ted Hughes but has drunk the same pubs. Has published far and wide and also draws cartoons...