Poetic Licence
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Your support makes all the difference.An image makeover is being mooted for buses and bus travel. John Prescott this week announced a range of new measures to persuade motorists to abandon their cars and take the bus
Our New Love The Bus
Let's take the 78 in early winter
When all the oaks are turning gold
From Tenpenny Hill to Thorrington
In mid-November sunlight after rain
And kiss outside the Co-op here
Till 4.16... and then 4.36...
THEN AT THESE MINUTES PAST EACH HOUR
Until the buses all stop running
A full hour short of closing time.
From now on sweetheart, it is only us
The driver and that gum-chewing girl
Who meets her mates at Brightlingsea
A shivering, knackered office cleaner,
An old bloke back from seeing a son in jail.
And some kid talking draw-deals on a phone
For these will be our fellow travellers,
The very young, the aged and the car-less
And out along the estuary at tea-time
The headlamps dash the fields and lanes
And rake the stops where no one waits
Who ever graduated to a car
DO NOT STAND FORWARD OF THIS POINT
Past a pub, a sign, a level-crossing
The new estate lit up like Lucozade
Deserted, but for hooded boys on bikes
A bell, a groan of brakes, a hiss of doors
Then back onto the rabbit-splattered road
The rattling draughty taxi's now our own
So let us take this 78 in winter
While all the world is busy driving home
One to each car and cursing at the traffic
Because apart from us and all these ghosts,
34 SEATED AND NINE STANDING
We may well find at last, that we're alone.
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