‘The New Road’ by Amanda Bell

I like this new road. Unlike the old
it can’t recall the frozen fields
where children skate in treadless boots.

This pavement has no sheltered gates
where teens, entwined like sap-filled weeds,
explore warm flesh beneath their coats.

I love this overpass because from here
I cannot see the house where once we were
and thought we’d always be.

I like the roaring ring-road:
it drowns out the echoes of our lives,
disperses them like smoke.

I’m glad this road just carries on,
oblivious to abandoned dreams,
and cannot haunt what it once knew.

I love its lack of looking back. How
it cuts so cleanly through the ties
that connect me, still, to you.

From issue #5: autumn/winter 2017

About the Author
Amanda Bell’s haibun collection Undercurrents was published in 2016 by Alba Publishing. Her illustrated children’s book The Lost Library Book was published in May 2017 by the Onslaught Press and her début poetry collection, First the Feathers, was published by Doire Press in November 2017.