Do You Have A Poetry Section?

Two in fact, she says
And sees me check the time with anxious smile
Then hurry off to try my luck;
A Dickinson, a Betjemen or Hughes?

But upstairs creaks with words
Whose weight could sink
A thousand best-laid plans
At every turn.

“Some gems up there!”, she shouts
As daylight fades an ochre brown
And trickles through the single pane
To barely light the room

And here I stumble wilfully
And stoop beneath the History
The Architecture, Journals
And the Memoirs

Until I am stood beside my prize
And join the years of dust
To settle at the shelves
Where now my watch has stopped.

David Thackwell