He
leaves for work
On
leaden legs,
His
mortgage on his back –
Another
nine to five' er,
Taking
up the slack
Policies
paid up in full,
Front
and back lawns mown,
He’ll
miss the flowering cherry –
My,
how that tree has grown
Today,
he makes a slight detour,
Turns
left instead of right,
At
the end of Hawthorne Avenue –
His
throat feels rather tight
The
railway bridge is up ahead,
The
eight o five is due,
He
falters, only slightly –
He
knows what he must do
He
leans against the parapet,
The
stone feels damp and cold,
He
doesn’t want to go yet –
He’s
thirty six years old
The
train approaches in the distance,
Doing
eighty on this stretch;
A
few more seconds still remaining,
He’s
feeling sick – he’s going to retch
He
jumps – the driver sees him –
The
squeal of steel on steel,
Too
late – a bump - it’s over –
No
second chance, no last appeal
There
is a certain irony –
Though
stark and rather grim –
Each
day he caught the eight o five,
Now
the eight o five’s caught him
A
ripple in a suburban pond,
Soon
fades and dies away,
A
paragraph in the local press?
Is
that all we’ve got to say?
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