NOWHERE?

This poem's not about Madeira, which I visited recently: a garden paradise if ever there was one. Instead, the location is an island in the Canaries, arid and bleak in its geography. 

While travelling around on local buses, I watched people alight, in what appeared to be scrubland without any sign of habitation. It made me realise that nowhere is always somewhere to someone.

TOURISTS

Obvious tourists, we ride the noon bus

with clay-faced matriarchs, old toothless men

and one dark child who stares at us

then turns away. He must be nine or ten, 

a child born here and likely to depart

within a decade, never to return.

He’ll leave this arid island if he’s  smart,

flee to the mainland, there to earn or learn.

The bus comes to a halt. People get down.

There are no houses here, no settlement,

only wasteland, dry wilderness, no town,

yet off they go, no sign of discontent,

with shoulders bent and not one backward look.

The bus moves off. We study our guide book.