History

Pockets of the past
spurt like geysers
when I walk through
the town centre:

a flutter of Ray-Ban
wayfarers snatched
from the fifties,
an old fashioned bus,

no 264, dinky, Campbell
soup red. Rivets
from a Meccano set.
The grey-haired conductor

waiting outside with his
pencil sharpener ticket
dispenser. Elderly men
dressed in fedoras, scarves

snaked around their shoulders.
A miasma of cigarette smoke.
The sudden flight of startled
pigeons, like the unforeseen
thunder of a Messerschmitt.