Islands
Bewildered
by the rush hour
surge of traffic
we peer at street signs,
slide slowly round
roundabouts
sprung up overnight,
mushrooms
grown to confuse us.
Swept along by the main
street’s vibrant flow,
we fail to recognize
new shops standing
where we remember
old cracked paint
and the woman who sold
curiosities.
A face in the crowd
holds us for a moment.
Grey hair, unshaven,
clothes ragged,
a scarecrow on the street,
was that the man
who once ruled our world?
That old woman,
hunched, wrinkled,
her face a Hallowe’en mask,
her limp, her canes
and dragging feet:
is that the dancing queen
who ruled beside him?
Lights change.
Cars move on.
Another island
beckons
as we pull away
from the past
and drive
into the future.
rogermoorepoet 
Yeh – this is more like it!
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D e gustibus non est disputandum!!! Happy New Year.
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‘The woman who sold curiosities’ gets me
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I was thinking of “The Olde Curiositie Shoppe” and how they are all slowly vanishing. Used to be called Tiendas de Ultramarinas, but they carried so much more than food, especially in the little Basque sea ports.
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wow, I didn’t know about that when I’ve read it before.
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I remember seeing men and women in Oaxaca, Mexico, carrying trays of “curiosities” and selling them on street corners. This in the nineties!
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