Permission
by Margaret Gallop
Halfway across the road in East Berlin
the small red man tells me to stop.
A real man beside me hesitates,
his wife defies the order and walks on.
She crosses two more roads and finds
a seat on the old canal bridge.
She seems triumphant as she waits,
the water underneath her drags.
She looks away from where we stand
with broken glass around our feet,
a ridge of tar and complicated lines
telling the bicycles where they may go.
At last the waited for green man appears,
his bowler hat a sign of East Berlin,
his arm and leg thrust forward, ‘Go ahead!’
Permission, we may cross the road.
—
Margaret Gallop: I write poetry to respond to the world around me and reflect on what I have seen and experienced.
—
Our Reader said:
So much is said in so few words, I am in awe at the author’s ability to reveal a great deal in only four stanzas.
didcotwriters.wordpress.com 
5 thoughts on “Reader’s Choice: Permission”