The City
Lulled
like a kid asleep, reeling down night-hushed streets, into
the arms of the suburbs. My silver bike cuts through the wild galaxies of rush-hour traffic
and I whisper the word astronaut into the cigarette-smoke funk of my kitchen.
In dreams I become as long as the shadows on the kerb, see the watermarked
patchwork of old labour and new money
in real time. I grew up yearning for the odd feeling of Old West England
the Brompton-bike businessmen its wild cowboys, pursuing the retreating steer of 9am
into the crosshatched streets. I never felt so small and young as when I realised
I chose the rows of red-brick houses as a place I loved enough to choose again.
Again, and again, studying the bristling figures of Lowry’s landscapes, again
in a mud-flecked park, again, in yearning memories, again, again, please
just one more time.
The tattooed arms of the artists’ quarter stretch skywards in the sun
loud with music and wanting. I bought ice-cream in a golden room once
lifted above, pigeon-like, as the streets below sang their tidal work-songs
in, out, red light, green light, go.
From the vintage shops I plucked armfuls of the brashest clothes
declared myself a hippy; a punk; a prep; a city girl.
Into the room that was only mine I became only me, but it was not a lie:
the room was in the city too. I came to understand the sprawling limbs
the churning organs, the way the heart moved; some parts quiet, some parts loud.
Into the sky over the hill with the view I whispered a wish
again, and again, and again
please
never let me go.
Daisy Harris
Daisy Harris Poetry 