This was the first piece I wrote for the Book of Journeys. The stark contrast of my fellow bus travellers clutching their M&S shopping and sneering, albeit with a sympathetic tone, at the woman outside begging being the inspiration for what followed.
Home
I overhear two old women on a south London bus-top
“So many of them. I don’t know why they come”
There’s a nod to compassion in her voice
as she privately berates the life-beaten woman
holding out her hand for hope of help at the bus-stop below.
“There’s nothing for them here, we haven’t got enough for our own!”
And I wonder what fires the below-lady escaped?
What gunpoints she faced?
What terrors she tricked in her race to freedom?
And where is her final stop for home?