Posted: 21/01/22

Sunset 8 January - Amanda Lowe

Vigil – came in on the train, full of people .  ‘I will be watching over you,’ I said to myself.

Up there, in the eyrie, the streets I could see looked deserted – dogwalkers in Queen’s Gardens.  Who am I watching over?  This raggle-taggle city of beautiful buildings and modern horrors.  Trying to re-invent itself – sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing, always trying.  Left behind city from the bombings – I thought of that – everything that was obliterated and what remained after the war.  I thought about my friend who I said goodbye to yesterday at his funeral.  I thought of what he’d left behind – everything, and nobody to leave it to.  No-one to watch over his things, his pictures, his belongings.  I will watch over things.  I watch the dogs playing.  I want a dog to watch over.  I watch the rooftops and the wet roads and the greys and the bright green Queen’s Gardens where the dogwalkers are.  I think about where they live – these dogs and their owners – in the city?  I think about my grandad who worked in the Queen’s Gardens and Princes Quay docks – a policeman.  He watched over the town down there.  I think about people long gone – places far away.  I see the bridge, spanning the Humber.  I think of my North Bank homeland and my South Bank adopted land, visible but miles away.  I see the sun – a tiny bean of hot rose pink nosing through the clouds to say goodnight leaving us with a delicate rose sky.  I’m watching you, sun.  I’m watching you Hull.  We’re here, we ain’t going anywhere.