To the M62

Grant me the slipstream of the lost,
the godspeed of all who have driven
east for Ireland and west for sunrise.
You will know your fellow travellers by
the backs of their heads and recognise
that face to face means only goodbye.
The hawk winging over the forecourt
flecks with a single drop of red
your diesel stain and its rainbow bleeds.
Watch in the truckstop’s turning circle
the cabs’ huge brows nod resignation
and slip right off, a brainpan of wires
earthed to a pair of tatty mudflaps.
A layby is a bed in air
hungry for your transient cargo
of sleep. I turn in eight feet up
and will not wake while the traffic lasts.
Find me beyond the service station
where the radio late shift drifts
to static. Take the space I have kept you;
arrive with me before dawn nowhere
but here, that is nowhere, but ours, alone.

{Ends}

Photo found here.