What is the story of a bra jettisoned

on the white lines in the centre of a road

eyed by a bevy of starlings on a telegraph wire

while green wheelie bins line up 

on a mucky grass verge

like recycled squaddies at ease

or lazy cut-price Easter Island statues?

our parents used to exhort us 

to always wear clean underwear

to spare our blushes

in the event of emergency personnel

having to intervene

when some inattentive motorists

unseated us from our bikes

bish bash bosh

if you're free a week Thursday afternoon

why don't we start to dig up 

the clogged-up motorways

then do the same to their feeder roads

and the unclassified roads

and any slither of poor

potholed tarmac or concrete

for they are teeming and pollutant

not the fresh air and ideas

of the caravans from the Middle East

the old books promised us

instead we gag on the rank fumes

of millions of vehicles going nowhere

very slowly in the congestion of our lives