Home from Home

I love Longsight
scruffy, vibrant, full of life
where Africans and Gypsies, Jamaicans and Afghans
all can feel at home
in our little Anglo-Pakistan.

I love Rusholme
where Mumbai meets Little Mogadishu
and the summer evening air is scented
with shisha and curry and diesel.

I love the city centre
the masonry mountains
the pride of past ages
and the hopes of today.

But Chorlton is where I come to be with me
to drink coffee, read the papers
to think, to write, to listen to music
to visit the river, to feel the changing seasons
to watch the people walking, to note the passing years.

I have my home in Longsight
amid the hurley burley
of asylum struggles and shopkeeper wars,
I work in Gorton
peeping in on fractured lives
and people getting by, doing their best,
But I live my truest life in Chorlton
alone in coffee bars or by the river
I am not lonely, I’m with myself.

By Chorlton Brook

The leaves wave to me,
gently, insistently,
the wind caresses me,
softly, so softly,
the rich soil clings to me,
asking me to linger longer,
the water on its ceaseless journey
calls to me
the birds ing for me
the raindrops bathe me
the swaying branches reach out to me
and if I allow, they stroke my face,
and endlessly repeat for me
you're not alone, you're not alone.