Plain Money

To my father nursing a drink near midnight
as he stares at the wall and beyond drawn curtains
- Dad, what's out there in the darkness
where the gasworks was? A by-pass
abandoning your parish in its hollow,
tail lights streaming elsewhere. Do you know:
is it worse to be corrupted by too little
or too much? Where does money go?

Entrusted with an errand - you remember -
greedy for distant places, I had spent
mum's change on foreign stamps: meshed grilles
with padlocks and a brisk ringing till
shut tightly. Lying to evade repayment,
I said I'd dropped her money in the street
where, doubtless unbelieving, she had sent me
...