Thirteen Minutes From Home

 

I was thirteen minutes from home

On a warm April day

Bumping my way through a crowd

The future a lifetime away

There were cars revving their engines

As they crawled along the street

kids were playing in gardens

And getting under everyone’s feet

 

Just for a second I paused

As I turned into Pandemic Close

As the noise fell away like a corpse

And the postman turned into a ghost

The cars all ground to a halt

The planes fell out of the sky

The children screamed to be let out

An old man started to cry

 

I was overtaken with guilt

That I would prefer it that way

Empty streets and less people and traffic

To ruin a clear spring day

I breathed in the cool clear air

I listened to birds in the trees

At last I could hear myself think

And my thoughts ran away on the breeze

 

I was seven minutes from home

When reality thundered back in

And that Utopia I’d seen in a vision

Disappeared like it never had been

And the crowd gathered round and exhaled

And on their breath there was pain

And I knew in my heart what I’d seen

I would surely see once again

 

The day I stepped into a dream

Prepared me for what was to come

Half a century away in the future

I would remember where I’d travelled from

I was two minutes from midnight

And all of us would bemoan what we lost

Utopia isn’t always an Eden

Sometimes it brings Hell as a cost