The Academi Cardiff International Poetry Competition

Russell Collier

Bob in Cardiff

The Minnesota song book’s back in town.
So you find yourself on the saw-dusted boards

of the Vulcan Bar, surrounded by the brass
and clocks of oceans, pictures of sea-ports,

and a ship’s big wheel - just the place
where some rambling blues man might pluck

from his case a battered six string,
and finger-pick a homage to lost docklands.

You down three slow rounds in the company
of bygones, then head for the Arena,

where bootleggers hawk T-shirts to a queue:
patchouli-head, hop-head, light-head, bob-head.

Soon you’ll be inside, underneath the lights,
all together in the big room, staring.

Later - among the Friday night Breezer babes,
the stretch-limos, and the pigeons - the opening

bars of Blonde On Blonde, come tripping
from a pub’s open doors. The rasp in the larynx

and The Memphis Blues mingle with the scent
of hops and cars riding the light breezes of summer.

So you take an outside seat on the Hayes,
and join in the chorus of an old song.

He’ll be on his way by now - to cross the continents,
leaving you with this subtle ringing in the ears,

as night-shift binmen jog past, hurling shop trash
to a rumbling wagon. The harmonica spears

its flinty notes to the wind. You lean back,
and glean from them what you will. Tonight,

you touch ice and hot springs, magnolia blossom,
the plains of a desert pungent with rain - things like that.

Russell Collier, winner of the Cardiff Poet Prize, is a native of the Rhondda who now lives and works in Cardiff. He has published many poems in magazines and graduated with an M.Phil in Creative Writing from Glamorgan University.