Everything looks good tonight

Everything looks good tonight

because children emerged from the dark,

laughing and singing in Queen Square,

because, beyond them, two terriers

snuffled at a wooden post,

because a conversation had only just ended,

because by the zebra crossing

someone automatically took

someone else’s hand,

because the city lights

opened out around the docks

and, beneath the Balmoral, the boat’s reflection

hung, almost perfect, upside down,

because on the last few hundred yards home

I heard people speaking Russian, Spanish, Italian,

because I had been talking with friends

from somewhere I’d been last summer,

because I was wearing the shoes I’d worn

in that place and for a moment

I could feel again the contours

of the pavements as if they’d been

imprinted on cheap plastic and canvas.

And so, yes, crossing the footbridge

everything looks good. By the old gaol gate,

someone pissed against a stone bulwark.

A cyclist went past. And I remembered

deliberately making another footbridge

pulse and shake by walking in step –

and Mike plunging into the river

from a pub terrace in Shrewsbury,

and reading ‘They flee from me ...’

for a practical criticism assignment

months after driving up the east coast

of Australia in bush-fire season

and being in love with people

I’d never see again, because

that was how it was back then,

because even flying home

was an opportunity and we sat

outside a house in Buckinghamshire,

with me jet-lagged and still smelling

of the chemicals they’d sprayed us with

in Sydney, and we were talking

at the night as it came down

and I would sleep on the sofa

when the cat brought in a dead pigeon.

Cars pass. The passengers look out.

I’m in amongst the bins and recycling boxes.

Across the valley, the city lights articulate

a kind of semaphore and I am nearly home.