The Real World?

The ‘phone call came out of the blue,Like a warning voice screaming a fighterWas bearing down on me with the sunBehind it - spitting fire and spite.

Maybe too dramatic a thought -But sooner or later something will creepUp behind and clobber you, robbing youOf a future which might resemble the past.

The warning this time though, to give truthIts due, was whispered down the ‘phoneBy a stranger who shape-shifted from aChild to a young woman in seconds.

Her mum, the voice told me, had gone.This was Rachel then, Barbara’s eldest.But there was no Barbara, as no Denham,Only names drifting in an ocean of names –

Only to drown in a vast indifference.But to me they are as real as the neighboursWho no longer speak to me or my wife –They are as shadows in our lives

When they drift past us, day or night.But our dear friends are there inThe Navigation, a kind of flesh and blood,Joking, laughing, mocking the time singing

The hours stupid when the gaudy juke boxComes alive and music floods the pub.So then I muse, as the world turns, the realMight only be a fond, raucous kind of dream.