The Wet Route Home
At a Glance
- • A poem of an October bus home through Salford, in drizzle, wet wool and trapped tobacco, with dark coming down over the Quays.
- • Author: Tracy Singleton
- • Form: Unrhymed five-line stanzas, three stanzas
- • Setting: A Salford bus stop and bus, October, half-past four
- • Published: Tales From A Harrogate Caravan
October locks the Quays at half-past four,
A low, lead sky pressing the bus-stop roof.
Drizzle hangs thick, not falling, just in place,
A grey wool blanket choking every space
Between cold brickwork and the sodden curb.
The bushes slouch, grease-heavy by the wall,
Heavy with grit and spray from five-day traffic.
People are huddling now, all shoulder-blades
And turned-up collars, heads driven deep down
Into the damp wool lining of their coats.
Nobody speaks. The wet gets in the ears.
A red front grunts and wheezes at the stop,
Windows opaque, bleary with human steam,
Swallowing shapes off the pavement one by one.
Inside, it smells of sodden wool and mud,
Of wet boots and the day's stale, trapped tobacco.
We sit knee-to-knee, squeezed in the yellow gloom,
While outside, over Salford, dark comes down,
Heavy as lead, sealing the windows shut.
About Tracy Singleton
Tracy Singleton is a poet from Salford. She writes about the city as it is rather than as it is remembered, the drizzle, the boarded pubs, the walk along the Quays, and the quiet suspicion that the real life is happening somewhere else.
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