Everyone On My Street E-Book

Robert Ferguson

• Herausgeber: novum publishing
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 35

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

Take a closer look at your neighbours on the bus, in the shops, and on the street. Where did they come from? What did they do in their working lives? What can they still do, despite their age or current disability? What makes life easy or difficult for them? Listen to them. Let them tell you about their loves, fears, ambitions, and needs. Share your own stories with them. These people are part of an increasingly varied contemporary Britain. Value them, as these poems do, upon reading Robert Ferguson's "Everyone On My Street."

Leseprobe

Imprint

All rights of distribution, also through movies, radio and television, photomechanical reproduction, sound carrier, electronic medium and reprinting in excerpts are reserved.

© 2024 novum publishing

ISBN print edition:978-3-99146-490-7

ISBN e-book:978-3-99146-491-4

Editor:Stephanie Marrie

Cover image:Natali Dobrovolskaya | Dreamstime.com

Cover design, layout & typesetting: novum publishing

www.novum-publishing.co.uk

Acknowledgements

The following poems were first published in Novum #13, vol. 5:

“Trans*”, “Visitation”, “Namaste”and“Where have you been, love?”

Most of the others grow from the inspirations provided by Lydia Towsey and particularly Charlie Jordan, muse beyond compare.

Introduction

Of the total UK population, more than half live in major towns according to the 2021 census, and only a tenth in rural areas. This explains why the streets in our towns and cities are crowded and buzz, while a country walk is likely to be quiet and lonely – except for the cars rushing from one town to another down rat-run country roads.

Not only are our urban streets becoming busier, the people in them are becoming ever more fascinatingly varied. In 2021, apparently, similar proportions of the UK population were of people aged under fifteen and over sixty-five (about a fifth each), or of a different skin colour, culture or dress code from pale grey and British-pink. Also, a slightly greater proportion was in some way disabled (a quarter, and remember, you can’t always see the symptoms of a person’s disability as you walk past them), and at least 1.7 million people in England and Wales (2.8% of the population) claimed a gender other than that attributed to them at birth.

This collection of poems tries to stand with the people of the minorities in our society. It tries to draw on their richness and revel in their gifts to the rest of us; and sometimes just reminds the majority that difference so often offers us opportunities which we will be the poorer for overlooking.

Robert Ferguson

Summer 2023

Inappropriate?

I’d valued you so much and for so long,

Wished I dared offer a hug, but did so fear

It’s newness would frighten you.

If I were to try, would it change our relationship?

Would you feel unable to come back again

And give me what I so much appreciate each day?

Just once, without thinking, in a conversation,

I stretched out my arms in sympathy

And you came to me, gladly and giggling with thanks.

Next visit, you were just the same as always,

Beautiful and kind and gentle, quick and strong.

I had to be the same, and so I was.

Her choice, not mine

We tried to relate

My sister suggested him

But he was a void

She thought I needed

A man in a lonely life

Between hairdressers

I didn’t. So what?

He seemed well dressed, clean shaven

She could take him home

But her husband Al

Wouldn’t understand, of course

Though they are both bored

So, working with him,

Trusting and attracted, she

Must pass him on

Why me? That’s trust too

Pity it didn’t work for us

He bored me, just like Al

Lost

Lawn, leaf-surrounded, bailey round the house

Beyond which is my shed-motte sanctuary

Where pen and cushion wait to welcome me

Back from the bustling world, back to a peace

I am precluded from by thunderstorms

And traffic crashing past my open gate.

Deep in the flowerbed weeds your bracelet lies

Tarnished no doubt, now dull and lost for ever

In fact, but never from my memory.

Where have you been, love?

Where have you been, love? I haven’t felt you in years,

Your tremoring indecision about everything,

Clothes, colours, lens or glasses,

Tea or coffee, bus or cab or walk?

What would she like or hate,

Put up with or accidentally match in taste?

What present would she like, one for herself

Or for her home? When is her birthday?

Is her sign compatible with mine?

Or opposite? If so, is that why I’m attracted?

Where have you been, love? Never seen a girl

Like this, in the office, in the street? Or just asleep

For all this time, and only now awake?

How are you, heart? You’ll see her in an hour