A Poem a Day (746): Waterloo guitar man

 
Two little pieces I wrote. The first one I wrote in Waterloo around 11pm. Was crossing the road towards the station and a guy was playing amazing guitar, watched by a blonde woman kneeling down. You could feel the connection between them. A bus light blared in the dark as it stopped for me on the crossing. He stopped playing, so I walked a little bit and stopped, waiting for him to start again. A train trundled over. He didn’t play again, so I stood there and wrote this poem, and then got my bus. Then I had a cheap cup of tea in a pub and wrote the second poem, Freedom, and later I listened to a guy play the theme tune to Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence by Ryuichi Sakamoto.  

 
Waterloo guitar man
 
You take in the echoes of nature,
all the missing pieces, the zeroes,
half-lives strewn, never fully realised,
trains munching metal girders, rumbling
carcasses, levelled wings of steel.
 
We live in seconds, places taken,
spaces reinvented so we can fit in them.
 
Music pursues as a waterfall,
ushering me across a stained-out road,
bus lights picking shadow from loin;
neon cut-glass glows, shrapnel howls –
we seek escape from the beaten scrawl
while part-notes mimic it all.
 
We count in time,
play with rhythms half-recalled. Stalled moments.
 
A musician sends a postcard to the moon,
rays caught on a double clef, romanticised,
this train the accompanying drumbeat
transporting sound into another yard.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, June 27, 2026