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Silhouette On A Staircase in Swindon
Through the windscreen's wipered half-moon,
I see tail-lights flash red up ahead.
My foot pushes down. The car halts
stock-still in a lane of the M4.
I glance sideways to a towerblock
a column of light on the staircase
and the silhoutte of a soul
female - the angled skirt - careering
down its corkscrew of dead air
in exuberant escape
from grey-carpeted officeness
like a stream reaching the plateau's edge
and plunging recklessly.
I muse on her as I tune into the traffic news:
there's long delays following an accident on the M4.
Bored and irritated, I turn again to look at the towerblock
and see for the first time its neon sign 'Hospital'
and its empty staircase
down which she had run
not from something but to.
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