Poetry Blog: Around Town

This is a poem that was prompted on an early morning run. I’d already written a poem about this particular sensation – being sweaty and knackered in the freezing cold of a winter’s morning – before, so although the idea was there, the concept was not.

I’ve taken it upon myself to take photos while I’m running. We have a number of lovely old building in Morley and it’s the ideal time to take photos of them when the place is deserted. But it seemed a bit of a waste just to stick them on a Facebook post about how far I’d ran and how tired I was.

In time, I thought I might start writing the odd blog about some of the different places in and around the place I live. The sign as you drive up to Morley has us billed as a ‘Historic Market Town’ so I wondered what mileage there’d be in writing about some of the places I found interesting.

My poem – ‘Around Town’ was more just about observations of what was going on as I ran past. While I was running around the town where I live as it was waking up, it felt like the perfect time to be viewing it. It’s quiet, yet in little pockets of town, busy all at the same time. Needless to say it put lots of ideas into my head as I ran.

Around Town

The vitality of the bright sunshine and the stillness of the hour
mean that town looks different today.
Sounds different too.

The solitude is punctuated by a few hardy souls
setting up for the day, their moods bouyed by the
immediacy of the light, the warmth of the air.

The majesty of the town hall is amplified tenfold
by a peerless blue sky that frames it perfectly
as the clock tower stretches like Icarus for the sun.

Elsewhere vans decant high viz clad bodies
to breathe new life into decadent old buildings,
boosting the heartbeat of the place where we live.

Further out of town, the cricket club looks primed for action,
as if everything has had a scrub and a fresh coat of paint,
yet because of the hour, not a soul treads the outfield.

In the park early morning dogwalkers amble
to start their day; no one commutes, but a 
light breeze rustles through the blossom, to remind us that it's there.

Emerging through the gates and onto the main drag 
that acts as a spine between two busy towns, 
reality bites and the slumber of the silence is smashed.

Down the hill home beckons.
Soon, outside will be swapped for in and the day will begin again.
Different sights, different sounds, same town, different life around town.

A few things to point out about the poem. Firstly, everybody’s town looks better in the sunshine and of course an early morning brings a quiet that won’t last. I was getting at the different feel of a place in the early morning sun as well though, with that first stanza.

I had to mention the Town Hall as it’s a place I regularly run past and it is an amazing old building. That’s it in the photo at the start of the blog. Furthermore though, it’s what prompted me to think about an About Town blog as mentioned at the start of this one. I think lockdown opened my eyes to quite a bit about the town where I live. I was able to explore and exploit the largely empty streets and discovered not only lovely buildings, but lots of completely unexpected things like a miniature railway covering someone’s entire back garden (which was massive, by the way). These are the kinds of things I look for now when I’m running, not least because they take my mind off feeling tired!

With both the cricket club and the park that are mentioned, it’s surprising how close they are to a major road. And yet, both have a feeling of peace to them, not only in the early morning. They make running around town quite a lovely thing to do.

I hope you enjoyed reading and as ever, would love to hear what you thought. Feel free to leave a comment and, if you’re feeling relaxed like I was running around in the early morning, you might be kind enough to let someone else know about the blog!