Benches

I sat on the bench on the High Row,

like an old man, or a tramp:

17 years old, wearing a charity-shop

greatcoat and a prog-rocker’s haircut,

listening to the Clash and the Pistols

in my head: another year to wait

before the Sony Walkman Cassette Player

let us take our music everywhere.

That boy is missing,

long disappeared,

though his hairstyle is

back in the stylish greys

of an “anteek” filter.

The music is played

in the flat keys

of hexadecimal code.

I sit on other benches,

an old man, like a tramp,

60 years old wearing a three-quarter

Kray coat and a Bahrain-souk keffiyah

worn like a scarf against the cold

unfelt by that boy from so long ago,

before the sun touched northern skin

when adventure took him everywhere.