Under a nearby weeping willow | a flock of geese pad and poke |
a push-chair rattles along | Alice wipes mud from an off-green park bench |
two bedlam kids squawking | then she rests |
Vicious seagulls hunt for sandwich fragments | Exhaust fumes, and hums and grinds, from the morning motor-rush waft over |
Alice fidgets and then heads off to the rose gardens | a discarded sheet of kitchen roll sticks to her shoe |
The flowers sway like nodding dogs in the backs of cars | She listens to echoing Greensleeves again and again piping out from the ice cream van over on the promenade |
Up-wind an old boy fires up his acrid briar | it’s time to move on |
She takes the tarmac path around and up to the rockery tasting the hint of salt blown in from the bay | A brittle crisp packet rattles, trapped in an exclamation-mark-like tree |
She wanders through the patterns of rocks | Her arms droop by her side |
and she catches her hand on a clump of nettles | Reluctantly, she prepares herself for the long walk home |
Ashley Bovan lives and writes in Cardiff and starts studying for an MA
in Creative Writing at Lancaster University in October 2009.
His website is www.ashley-bovan.co.uk