Hot Night: Claude Road


The moon rises, snags on a rooftop, stretches slightly, frees itself with a plop and wobbles into the sky. The night is hot, and three storeys up


the summer scents of garden herbs are going well with that of lamb from the fast-food shops on Albany Road. Down there with the thyme


the street’s on its doorstep in tee shirt and shorts, cracking the tabs of cans and passing red dots of joints around, or up in its bedsit with Abba or Queen,


all windows flung wide, showered, and smoothing talc on scarlet skins, as taxi drivers slow to count the houses, then pull-up, sounding their horns. *


Burglars shimmy to the ground and car thieves cannon into road signs as a squad car sirens down Claude Road. And now the children having fun


tripping the intruder lights on bits of lawn, wheelie-bins and area walls, trying cars to make them howl and doing signatures with aerosols,


scatter into alleys off Claude Road, where cats sit watching pigeon lofts, where dogs with faraway expressions take turns to give each other lifts


and caged bulbs on extension leads light those workshops where mechanics, self-employed and working late, beat panels out and re-line brakes.


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