Trevor Hewett: Hope

Two of them, sharing a green park bench,
their heads bent, talking and eating chips;
one gorging, one pecking like a small bird
and dabbing her lips
with a tissue. One, seventy, glasses, white hair,
and one, in a Blackburn shirt, is eight:
the future talking to the past
about love and hate
and discussing, earnestly, right and wrong
and setting themselves the occasional poser,

like a couple of Oxbridge philosophy dons
debating Spinoza.
This is hope: one recalling how things might have been,
and one seeing how they could be -
both of them seeing what still might be sought
and neither seeing why not.