Old McNellie

by Andrew Sclater

Old McNeillie on his bike
never before or after
anything like
that singleminded direction
in a man with eggs 
to sell

No one ever really 
thought McNeillie
was quite
the full half-shilling
his trousers all frayed
and wet

Wet with the roads and hedges
wet with the tears
he’d wept for
nobody knowing
his father had laid his mother flat
up there in her attic room 

at the top of his house

and Jim now nothing for that.