Some thoughts from Birmingham, England sixty eight years ago, refreshed each time I travel on public transport.
Rooftops have always interested me,
whether I am in a moving train or on
the top deck of a bus it is the rooftops
which have my undivided attention.
Most people live their lives at ground
level, most of the time anyway. Some
live with their heads in the clouds
hoping that someday their lives will
change from the humdrum existence
locked in at street level.
So I look at the rooftops, at a different
world a strange world of dirty windows,
some covered with brown paper.
TV aerials, smokeless chimneys dressed
in pigeon droppings. And above the stores
old tailors dummies staring with sightless
eyes at God know what.
Now and again I see a lone girl
leaning on the window frame
looking at me looking at her, and I
want to wave but she turns her head
to look at someone or something else.
Who was she, was she looking at me,
or were her thoughts far away.
It doesn't matter for there are sights
which will soon attract my attention, and
she will be forgotten, until I pass that way
again when I expect I shall hope to catch
a glimpse of her.
Gargoyles look out with blind eyes
from old churches. Their tongues
lapping up the dirty air as if feeding
the dirty stonework, carved two, three,
four or five hundred years ago.
A red mop pokes its head out of a
window and twists its dirty head this
way and that sending dandruff into
the air to be sucked around the
corner of the building by the already
polluted breeze.
The red mop is withdrawn back
though the window to be replaced
by a turbaned head of a cleaning
lady, whose ample bosom rests
on the dirty stonework of the window
sill. She stubs out a cigarette on
the stone, then spits, and watches
the spittle fall to the ground three
stories below.
Charred bones of a burned out building
come into view, with a giant sign saying,
"Closed for Stocktaking" and a smile
creases my face. Someone has a sense
of humor, or perhaps they are happy
because the insurance payed up.
My journey into another world comes
to an end, as I get out of my transport
and look up at the sky. A dozen or more
Tumbler Pigeons circle the rooftops,
and I wonder what their view is like and
I desired to be able to fly.
To be able to see the roof tops, hats
in all their various shapes and materials.
Slate tiles perhaps all the way from Wales.
Aged copper; which having lost its coppery
glow to be replaced by a more comfortable
and pleasing greenish gray.
It is another world which most of us fail to
see when we travel through the older part
of a town or city. I am fascinated by all that
is just above eye level, yet unseen by those
who live in the comfort zone of the street.
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