I found you first in Windsor
I was burning bridges over the Thames.
You were too square for my backpack
too familiar not to own.

I remember you best in Spain
a simple twist in Barcelona
found me tangled up in bus rides
you said Meet me in the morning in Grenada.

You were my wise advice in love
my mother’s voice in Tangier
my idiot wind map flapping me off course
and buckets of rain back to England again.

After a message from my Jack of Hearts
you were shelter from the storm
telling me no-nonsense
You’re a Big Girl Now. I carried on

and every time I left a town whispered
… lonesome when you go.

This is a very old poem. I wrote it as an exercise in 2007 about my O.E in 2003. This version marks ten years since I was lost in Spain and Morocco. ‘Blood on the Tracks’ is one of my all-time favourite albums and I find comforting references to it all over the place. The book I’m now reading mentions it in paragraph one and the book I’m writing...? Well we’ll have to wait and see.

More Tuesday Poems here.