WORLDS APART

 

Safe in a tower somewhere

a woman writes about anger

while on ground level a woman walking

home from work gets a police check.

 

Made to produce papers, abandoned

for three days in a cell, bedroll and blanket,

no chance of a phonecall either.

 

But egotism rolls around the tower

she paints it beautifully with blackened rage,

scars of privilege unfold across clouds.

 

Back on ground level, the boss

will not pay the other her days in jail

though she is tired from years of paying

for rights to exist, for the right to pay more

 

and if she had six thousand pounds

she wouldn't spend it on a tower

she's take a plane to the distant family

last seen twelve years ago.

 

Published in The Recusant (Militant Thistles) June 2018