Christmas Eve Down Chapel Street

Description

On the tram she’d let her face go.
It hung down with the trash
and the graffiti scratched into the walls.

She ignored everyone who came and went
and as the neon lights reflected
I could see that not a single bulb
was travelling its way to her.

She was a working girl.

I’d seen her before,
Always alone,
and now she was heading home.

Over forty years were on her face
and as Chapel street rocked slowly past
I wondered, did you know girl,
that you still had an audience.

When she finally pushed the bell
she stood up near the front
and looked at me through a sheet of Perspex

Merry Christmas Love, I said,
for our clocks had just ticked over.
Merry Christmas she replied, with the warmest little smile.

Then after lighting her cigarette,
She briskly headed down Carlisle street,
like someone trying not to become a ghost.

So I began wondering, as the lights told me to go,
if any part of this aching world
would fall apart if this old working man

left his empty tram at this intersection
So as he could go and walk
this working girl home.

MGG