Walking behind you – your chignon, your tanned
forearms, your calves, your white, pleated skirt
swaying, just the suggestion of that
bottom – into a sunlit pub on
Wenlock Edge for gin and orange and a pint;
watching Macbeth through inexorable
drizzle in a Shropshire market town –
‘It will be rain tonight’. ‘Let it come down’;
drying off in another pub, hearing
someone recite Housman loudly:
‘When smoke stood up from Ludlow…;’
driving home, your sleeping head on my shoulder,
your future already in my hands – nearly
two generations ago.
calveschignondrizzleforearmsgenerationsgin and orangeHousmanLudlowMacbethpintpleatedShropshireskirtswayingtannedWenlock Edge
Steve Crewe
July 5, 2016Beautifully painted, David – memories from days gone by that enrich the tapestry of advancing years.
Keith Johnson
July 4, 2017If the pub was the Longville Hotel you may have been served by my uncle Ron Clarke!
David Selzer
July 5, 2017My heart says the pub was on the Edge itself. My head says it was somewhere south of Shrewsbury on the A49. Also I wasn’t driving. My blind date and I were back seat passengers in a friend’s car – and not interested in the geography! (And that’s probably another poem). But the rest of the piece is factually accurate – events that took place exactly fifty six years ago this Monday gone.