KING'S GAMBIT PLAY THE MARKET SQUARE

King’s Gambit are tuning up on stage

as we shelter, cow-like, from the lashing rain.

We’re under the tarp of a market stall,

our coats zipped up. There’s a crowd of us.

I’m grumpy. I came to watch the band,

not drown. But over Jimmy’s End,

some blue appears in the Stygian gloom.

So maybe we will have our show.

Meanwhile, a New Orleans-style jazz band

marches through the deluge playing.

The rain soaks through their clothes,

but they are smiling anyway. This moment’s theirs;

if they get pneumonia, so be it.

On stage the band are looking ready.

But still it’s raining bloody cats and dogs.

They are facing forty empty seats

and the blue patch at Jimmy’s End’s gone black.

Will they play? We wonder what will happen.

I remember Justin at the Bardic Picnic,

his strip dance when the heavens opened.

I won’t do that, but we could chant no-rain

like Woodstock hippies to end the flood.

I’m building up to suggesting it

when the clouds part inexplicably

as if two hands had separated them,

as if King’s Gambit had brought the rain

to add a little extra showmanship.

Before the band have even started playing

their folkbeat with a Shoe Town vibe,

all the seats are full, and forty bums are wet.

But one song in and all the crowd forget.

I long to jump out of my seat and dance

in front of everybody, like a dick,

but wallflowers need a lot of beer for that.

I’ve just had Sprite for breakfast.

(copyright Bruce Hodder)

Bruce Hodder lives and writes in Northampton. He published a collection of his poems called 'The Journey Home' with Whiskey City Press earlier this years. His poems have appeared on numerous websites and in print magazines including 'Under the Bleachers', 'The Rye Whiskey Review', 'Best Poetry' and 'Medusa's Kitchen'.