Night Journey on the M62

The motorway lights slide over

our driver's pate. His Doc Marten

issues play the soft pedal clutch

of this great white Wurlitzer.



Safety is in his wristwatched hand,

resting on a serge thigh,

and the knife-edge crease

of his pale-blue shirt.

Safety is the mannered flick of

the console switches.

Safety is the thud of studs as

he switches lanes,

the lay-by ghosting past.




Safety is the throbbing wheelbase,

is the cushioned hiss of

air brakes, the coach

kneeling down at his

Gardener's Arms stop.

striding forward,

billowing out, surging over

the Thelwall Viaduct.


Away over home, the neon

clusters, the billboards

say 'The Future's Knowsley'

and the mind roars with laughter,

mistranslates it:

The Future's Nowhere



A hundred novel pages read

do funny things to a night journey.



A thousand journeys say

you will be delivered safely

to your destination;

(we still say 'destination').



The driver takes us down

to 50, then 40;

after all that striding,

all that billowing

and surging

he takes us down a motorway that

fizzles out at Edge Lane,

the end.