I thought I might have had the morning,
but the rain came on early,
beading heavily on the windscreen as I drove.
The wipers flicked it off, but in the pause,
the rain settled back more heavily than before.
And my spirit, only half awake, dissolved,
so I turned the car around.

I came home through my old home town,
seeming dark in this November light.
I passed the newsagents where, long ago
I bought my comics.
Gone for a tanning parlour now.
And the bus stop where I used to wait,
still sends a chill:

Ribble Buses to school,
daily exiled to the periphery of a small world.
And seeming not that much bigger now.
Oh, how they used to frighten me,
those schooldays.
Workdays too, if truth be told.

I view it with the feeling of a survivor,
looking back in anger
at a world forever grey,
dim-lit like this, and drizzling rain.

And now my freedom,
though ever so timidly embraced.
I wonder why.
Should I not be more triumphant?
Yet still the spirit cowers,
clouds the vision, at least it does
on days like this.