This is the time for poetry

This is the time for poetry ...

The young man in the café
On the next table to me and my closest poetry friend
Sat penning verse
Line after line in swift movements
Of the hand
I glanced over every now and then
As my friend and I talked pure poetry –
From where it had taken us, until now

And then there was the businessman
Next to me on the bus homeward
He sat swiftly scanning line after line
I strained to see the book’s title
The Wrecking Light

I watched his suited reflection in the front window
Of the double-decker
His hands slowly turning the pages
As if searching for green shoots
To appear between the concrete cracks of his day

I got out three A4 sheets of my most recent poems
Which were folded in my handbag
And read them -
Our shoulders almost touching

I looked it up The Wrecking Light when I got home
And, O my …
Brilliant but unrettingly bleak was the consensus -
A sign of the times

This is the time for poetry …

This is the time to find
The rhyme and the rhythm

This is the time for poetry …

When smallness presses us
Into the darkest of corners
When disappointments plummet
One after the other
Into the hidden pool of our souls

This is the time for poetry …

The seed that slips down the concrete crack
Does not die

This is the time for poetry …

Poetry will find the unattended part of you
And blow the dust away