Looking for dead neighbours on Google Street View

Observe the well-heeled home improvement –

once crumbling fascia boards renewed

and paint-peeled window frames

now double-glazed. Mostly.

Stained glass panels, here and there,

remain in doors

where uPVC adjoins Victoriana.

But rusty gates, jammed open, have long gone.

Shrubbery, overgrown, cut down

then paved to park a second car.

 

Prompt after early Mass

(old man Choat expected you on time)

you would pick up the heavy bag, bulging

with Sundays and their supplements.

Start out, interested less

in the lurid banner headlines

than racy lingerie small ads.

 

Every dropped off slab of half-truths –

left in hallways, squeezed through letterboxes –

would lighten the burden.

Halfway round, at Mrs. Name Forgot,

a second load awaited.

Your hands already black with newsprint.

 

Stacked coins on window ledges, hidden

in eggcups, under pots, behind milk bottles.

Tips from many;

thruppenny bits the favourite.

Its twelve-sided rim like a parapet,

a nickel weight in your palm.

Sometimes you’d stop and chat.

Never mention the daily boy

who, in his pre-school rush, had no such time

and was scarcely tipped at all.

 

Reach inside, retrace your steps – like as not

you won’t return this way again.

From scummy culvert crawled through once

(in your own escape movie)

to alley where the town’s sole punk

sprayed RIOT NOW in Day-Glo pink,

these modest streets

they run like veins within you still.

 

xi. 2023