We walked, full of purpose, among commodious villas with deep green gardens
Where the latches on the iron gates clunked,
and heavy with hesitant greeting,
the gates grated and squeaked
sending a warning signal, probably on deaf ears.
Up the drives there was moss
in the cracks of the flagstone paths and
dandelions pushing up
through impossible
small gaps
and the ladies who took the church magazine
would take their time in reaching the door with its insistent bell
requesting the subscription in April.
The loose-limbed legs of their youth now slow and heavy,
they would open the door with a shoosh on the patterned tiles of their numbered flats.
There’d be a faint fusty scent as they gathered their purses and opening them with care
fished out a pink 10 shilling note to pay,
then returned to their rooms with framed men in their khaki
and family groups round Victorian chairs.
Back on the Otley Road cars, all black, made a drone of busy-ness
and the blue Samuel Ledgard bus laboured up the hill,
green buses plied to Cookridge, Ireland Wood and Tinshill
and a red bus stopped on its way to Ilkley.
They filled the air with dark fumes, that mingled with a hint of Bryan’s frying on the mist.
Rosie Cantrell