On the Towpath by Anthony Watts

 


 

Anthony Watts has been writing ‘seriously’ for over 40 years.  He has won prizes in poetry competitions and has had poems published in many magazines and anthologies.  His latest collection is The Shell-Gatherer (Oversteps).  His main interests are poetry, music, walking and binge thinking – activities which he finds can be happily combined.

 


 

 

             

             

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

           

 

 

On the Towpath

 

 

 

 

 

His face, a cider apple, pipped

with one brown tooth, he stopped his bike to chat. 

His eyes were ageless summer, innocent

of irony or stress.

 

He told me how as a lad he nodded off

in the heat but his horse knew what to do,

turning at each corner of the field

to plough the diminishing square.

 

I made a comment on the weather,

conscious that I owed him something more

and inched myself away.

A privet hedge

returned me to the times, a polished car

protruding its suburban snout.

 

 

Anthony Watts

 

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