Springtime in Suburbia


Acacia Avenue
Mock Tudor boxes
Cloned for conformity
In red brick reserve
~
Regimented daffodils
Yellow trumpet nodding
To friends and family
Over chess board drives
~
Morning rituals
Ecclesiastic sponging
of Sunday standing Volvos
Thirty percent down and five years to pay
~
Dosing cats, needle teeth yawning
Restless dogs, boredom barking
Rumble of mowers, panzer rolling
Across green sculptured lawns
~
Elsie Parker, avoids the mirror
Searches for comfort chocolate
Sighs for the might have been
Behind closed doors
~
Teenage soldier dressed for action
Designer jeans, margarine hair
Pockets the cell phone, grins at the promise
of lunchtime larger and the everyday girls
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Author note.

A word of explanation on the use of the word ‘reserve’.
The meaning in the context of the poem is for the English wish for privatesy i.e. ‘Don’t invade my space unless you are invited to’.
A visitor to our country will at some stage encounter this middle class attitude to strangers. We don’t make eye contact and smile at passing people in the street, it’s a cultural thing.