The compass needle led me astray driving past signs
welcoming visitors to Manor Park. Avenues mapped
with neatly styled pockets:

mansions, hedged borders, spirit-level lawns - all
straightening to ponds where dragon flys pirouetted.
Groups of people passed both old and new:

worried men on mobiles walked beside time wasting
wives, flustering on details like being late, table napkins
and paper plates.

It was late afternoon and tall children dipped into
shadows already bequeathed. A student life
embossed on their marble faces.

Perhaps all of them were visitors looking for some corner -
lost? It felt unsettling to ask them for advice – geography -
“well it wasn’t their thing.

Yes, it rang a bell, but this estate was a snake pit of
a place, we’ve only been here six months and still
get lost, so sorry we can’t help”.

Quickly, they were gone, to some garden party nearby:
a cloistered spot where men could talk of aspiration while
women poked in the freezer of their lives.

The tall children would soon fill those shoes, waiting
to distil other regrets and re-invent sins in different
guises.

Oddly, habits and rituals smooth the wrinkles
difference includes. The quality of the gaze was
kept out of sight.

Only the clap-happy could look upon this
tabernacle of delight. The people of this estate
reminded me of soldiers on leave.

A battalion in pale fatigues itching to fight – keeping
the watch. In the distance, a spoil of black smoke arose
from yet another barbeque.

A sound of laughter, gardens of peripheral vision,
never interested in the plight of narrow lives
or dreams shelved in the offy.