Friday poem: The Chauffeur by Martin Plantinga

The Chauffeur

There’s a lot of waiting in this job,
but not so often outside police stations.

My natural milieu is Royal Parks,
those long, forgiving avenues
where deer pretend not to notice you
and the lawnmower hums,
confident that history will behave itself.

You might glimpse a thrown vase,
a flash of temper behind glass —
but never history breaking,
only its borders trimmed
neat as a flowerbed.

Yesterday the flowers were weeds,
the palace a fortress,
and the hand that would flick the button
to lower the partition
and give a direction
was one slope in a church roof
meeting the other —

and the world tilted
almost imperceptibly,

while the roads remained the same.