A Quiet Exit
Written By
Poet and Photographer J H Martin @ A Coat for a Monkey
SHADOWS OF DUST
The sun
Offers no illumination
In the rust coloured
Brick dust of dawn
Swirling around a woman’s figure
Tapping mortar off of bricks
That last week used to house
In their one room
A mother father grandmother grandfather
Son daughter two dogs and a cat
Where did they go?
I wonder
Sitting watching
Eating steamed bread
Do the idle bulldozers know?
Did the tents in rows
For migrant workers
See them leave?
Did the lines of fluttering flags
Hear where they went?
Or was everybody too busy to notice?
The woman throws
The clean brick onto the pile
And picks up another one
Pausing briefly to wave
And shout hello
To the three approaching green shirts
Who wave and shout back
And then start sifting through
The rubble heaps
For lead pipes tiles and fittings
To sell on somewhere else
Their shouts and conversation
Soon drowned out
By the claws of diggers
As they start up and begin
To break up and remove
The remains of a hundred demolished homes
To build a hundred more
In the din of metal on stone
The machines huts piles of bricks
Hats and scavenging hands
Are swallowed whole
By the incoming mist of enveloping dust
That turns the sun
Into a dim lit distant shadow
Where did they go?
I wonder
Watching the steamed bread
Disappear in my hand
Images and text © J H Martin
