I am putting together a new manuscript and came across a poem I wrote when I was living in Iowa, just after the terrorist attacks in September 2001.  I don't think it will make it into the collection - the line breaks seem a bit clunky, and poems that need an explanation tend not to be good poems - but it seemed appropriate to the world we are living in now.

IA 52240

OK, at chucking out time 
or after the parties,

but why now at six 

are there five yellow taxis 
lined beside the blue and white and red 
on silver of a Greyhound bus 
called Chicago?  The lack
of anything else to do?

The off-chance, a coffee, a ride one

day in ten; wait for San Francisco then

New York.  Like most of life no reason.

But I am walking back from where no hope is,

where there is nothing, no, least of all, names;

so for this scene, a surety

of colours, thanks.