Poetry Trail: A True Story

Poetry Trail: A True Story, originally uploaded by Colonel Blink.

This is a strange one. I walked out of my front door on Sunday morning to find that someone had carefully laid a trail of pages torn from an anthology of love poetry for about 300 metres along the opposite roadside.

Was someone saying adieu to love? Was it some sort of art installation? Was it literary criticism? Was it farewell to a hated set text? Was it a ceremony and ritual? Was it rage or pain or laughter or disdain?

As I watched the wind started to move the pages from their appointed places; they had been all facing the same way, all roughly the same distance apart and if a parked car was in the way then they had been placed underneath.



There was something unsettling and hysterical if not unwholesome in the way they had been arranged. I walked down the hill to look into the river (The scene of two suicide attempts already this year) but when I got there no one was drowning.

The roads and streets were Sunday empty. I carried on to the newsagents and bought a newspaper and some milk. Then I returned home and made myself a bacon sandwich.

By lunch time, the pages of torn poetry had drifted like autumn leaves into odd corners and doorways, their sequence broken for ever.