The Travelling Man

Life moves forward like a light shade in winter
When the snow knows the neighbours alarm
That the doors might be open in the lounge next door…
Letting all the heat travel throughout the house
Warming the fictional dormouse in the child’s homework
As the parent’s go bezerk at their choice of Christmas toys.
Something for the girls something for the boys
An ebullient sexual chemistry set from the chimney sweeping imagination
Of a top down economics in Industrialised England
About what the wealthy need when the poor man has spent
All his money on the kitchen table pies and cakes.

Is the caravan worth it this year?
Or do I need to cut down on the rudimentary beer?
Laughing on the phone about his personal performance all alone
When he has come home from travelling to the office in downtown Montreal.
That is where the American man knows his autumn from the fall
And the conservative consummate professional addresses Churches differently.
There is so much to see in life, why wait outside a Church
For the Fall of Man to pull you in and leave your office life in the lurch.

What would it profit you to gain your soul and lose the world?
In a world where the presence is felt at some point for Eve, the (new) girl.

AI Summary

It’s a poem about the soft forward‑motion of life, like winter light slipping through a neighbourhood where open doors warm fictional dormice and parents panic over Christmas toys, while the speaker wonders about caravans, beer, office workers in Montreal, and the way churches pull people in with the old story of the Fall; the poem moves between domestic scenes, economic worries, seasonal shifts, and spiritual questions, ending with a quiet reversal of the biblical riddle — not what it profits a man to gain the world and lose his soul, but what it means to feel the presence of something sacred in the everyday, embodied in Eve, the new girl, the reminder that life keeps offering beginnings even when the world feels cold.

Leave a comment