He has paid a small coin to a glass box
like a fairground machine:
a dull purple ticket
permits him to sway with the tram,
which pushes on through a city of breezeblocks
and neo-baroque stucco.
The people might be
his second cousins twice removed:
a woman in fishmonger's gloves
coming home from the market,
a man balancing two dusty old bikes
between fellow-passengers.
In this incarnation, his tweed suit
is not quite threadbare enough.
He maintains a sense of direction but
there's nowhere it can take him.
Somewhere at the end of this line
is a field of dandelions and a bluebell wood.
© Peter Daniels
Published 2009 in The North