City Streets.

Alma Road slopes slightly downhill, which makes it an ideal place to start a run in the morning, a spring in my step. I notice Spriggens Park, which is now a greyhound race track, going to the dogs. In the street through the Old Cemetery, where 'the rude Forefathers of the hamlet sleep', I see graying obelisks, gravestones and headstones, faded epitaphs. Beside the river and the railway line, is a conveyor belt whereI once labored with a shovel, wheelbarrow, and stones, a heavy load which I struggled with. Now I labor with words on life's conveyor belt. There were passenger trains here once, to New Plymouth and Palmerston North, but only freight trains now. 'What an asset those passenger trains would be', I think, as a red-brick wool store appears waiting for shift workers to clock in after they clocked out years ago. An assertive grey processing plant looms steam spouting from its funnels into the air of industrial success. I'm now on my way like a sprinter close to home and the hints, ideas from somewhere 'out there'. -1st. December,2016.