My poem - The Near Thing

The Near Thing

We only met for a moment,
Beside a lichened wall,
In fact, to be perfectly truthful,
We didn’t meet at all.

The road was a ‘B’, and narrow,
The bend was an ‘S’, and smart;
I was passing a grocer’s van,
You a pony and cart.

I may have touched the grocer,
It’s hard to be sure, of course.
At an aggregate speed of a hundred
We certainly scared the horse.

We almost met for a moment,
Instead we just passed by,
In short we missed each other,
Though God alone knows why.

I got half a thumb on the hooter,
Did you get a toe to the brake? 
I reckon a mile between us
Before we began to shake.

Did the landscape go pink at the edges
For you as it did for me?
Did you drop to a thoughtful thirty
For a mile, or two, or three?

We only met for a moment
(As I think I must have said),
But another moment either way
And we’d both of us be dead.

And the most alarming aspect
Of having so nearly met
Is that by this time tomorrow
We’ll both of us forget.