When I Get the Stop Wrong

When I get the stop wrong and step off in another town,
I already know I’ll get the people wrong too,
the ones I’ll say “Hello” to.
I’ll swap my usual afternoon thoughts
for some new surprise in the unfamiliar streets,
I’ll glance fleetingly through the door of an abandoned house,
I’ll smile at a passer-by I let go first,
I’ll sit a while in the café I’ll never see a second time,
reading a pointless leaflet for an unknown show,
sipping at the falling leaves and the new faces,
at the scent of cinnamon clinging to the chin
of the young girl who brings it to me in a hurry.
That way the loneliness of the unknown place is more welcoming.
And the sense of emptiness — fuller.

When I get the stop wrong and step off in my own town,
which hasn’t noticed I was gone,
I’ll smile at the memory of a day well spent.

I’ll climb the stairs to my room and look at myself in the mirror,
asking: “How often must I leave the familiar outlines
to feel timelessness, the wink of fate and the scent of cinnamon?”