City Sonnets - 83 and 84

Here are two more - they're pretty similar in time and place, which I haven't tended to do all that much, for some reason.

In one of them the voice is bummed out, in the other it's happy - extraordinary to think that a person's youth was not one amorphous mood

AVIEMORE

It happened when I was in Aviemore.

Where folk were skiing, folk were fishing, I

Was doing nothing. That’s what I went for;

For two days sitting miserably by,

As life went on around me. Snow was thin,

I’m told, and didn’t really start till we

Were driven back round mountain corners in

A faulty car which skewed precariously.

We stopped at a mechanic in Dundee,

Took a bus back to make our football match.

I didn’t reach home ‘til ‘round half past three.

1571 … and I couldn’t quite catch

Each word of every message. Aviemore;

this, I suppose, was what I went there for.

DUNDEE

The taxi back from Dundee dropped us right

In front of Atholl as the next day rose.

And what a night it’d been, and what a night,

When time and time again, space freely froze.

We’d had our dinner early to make sure

We watched the football, and the football stopped

At random when it tacked to the right score.

And after we’d all watched champagne corks popped

We hopped in convoy ‘cross the gaudy Tay

And split the team for different escapades.

And twenty-two pounds was a lot those days,

Enough for tipsy ticker tape parades.

And what a night it was, though undersung …

So stupid, careless, shocked by joy, and young.