Not the Usual Grasses Singing (2005)

Not the Usual Grasses Singing by Ros Barber

Done Up

Where most roads slide along their fronts,
this one headbutts the beach, end on.

A South London boy in his custom car
crawls his woofers at full blast

some twenty yards, then turns around,
like a broken zip, undoing the crowds,

and doing them up in the same motion.
It’s a dead-end road. This is the ocean.

from ‘Not the Usual Grasses Singing‘ © Ros Barber 2005