Avonmouth

Me and Cassie went to Avonmouth today.
I think we went to find something old, something that was out there,
Walking with the sky sitting low on the horizon,
blue backing all things-
everything stretching far;
loose threads of clouds twist and become concrete.
The towering flour mill is
disused, still solemnly standing firm,
a monument from before,
gridded windows smashed
like a broken bingo card,
shattered but still symmetrical and strong.
Solitary the mill slots onto paper blue
like neat collage,
made for each other,
as if by an artisan.
As if someone had a hand in it.
The truth is it just happened.

The pub in Avonmouth is long.
A high ceiling, it’s customer’s sparse:
3 lined up against the bar,
crowded up to each other,
the rest of the pub a vaccum.

It was almost a ghost town, on this blue and white Wednesday,
to me at least.
To me it was a scattering of people lost in long lines and rushing cars:
destination elsewhere.

On the way back we saw big white declarations of love on the iron bridge:
TOM 4 KAREN ’87
’87!’, we gasped,
like we had at the sky and the mill.
The bridge had held their love on its side,
on the dark iron their love had endured,
twenty-two years as the paint peeled and cracked and the trains screeched past in fury,
and their love still remained.
Twenty-two years old.

And the mill?
That was older,
much older.
The train speeds me back
and parts of everything, big and small, remain.