Footsteps In The Fog

Given that for most people, sight is the predominant sense, it's perhaps not surprising that this week's theme of   footsteps  has evoked primarily a visual response, with the metaphorical a close second. But I'm much more intrigued by the audible possibilities inherent in the idea, especially as we are now entering the season of mists and mellow spookiness, and my local supermarket is already well stocked with pumpkins and pumpkin-carving kits, ghoul masks, festoons of spiders-web and tubs of trick-or-treat sweets. (Oh, capitalism! Don't we love you.) 

Isn't the sound of footsteps way more intriguing as a stimulus to the imagination than the mere sight of them? 

Close your eyes. What do you hear? Whose footsteps could they be? What are they like? Where are they coming from? Where are they going to? Why have they stopped? And what do they want with you? 

With the scene suitably set, it's straight to the poem after this busy Saturday (and Blackpool were absolutely rubbish away at Mansfield by the way). Are you sitting uncomfortably? I don't know what this is about. It's definitely league three and I may revise it absolutely or scrap it entirely, but for now...

Beneath The Window

Outside these Soho windowpanes.

fog slides like a fox, curls stealthy,

peering in, whiskering at the gap.

I lie awake past one, in the dark

with the curtains open, feeling it

play over my face, just listening.

Eliot surely would have understood,

Dickens too, who liked to tap

along our thoroughfares following

the hobble of clog on cobble

observing this nocturnal lowlife

in its habitat, but not in a peasouper.

Stilettos stab unsteadily up the street,

stop beneath the window. Wonder

if  I'm lying here, holding a torch?

Hoping you'll ring the bell? To hell

with you, dipsy Demoiselle. Go piss

in someone else's porch. Goodnight.

...and did I say that Blackpool were rubbish today? (That's not part of the poem, just a gripe, by the way.) Onwards.

Thanks for reading, S ;-)