Sometimes You Think of Bowness

Sometimes you think of Bo'ness

And swans on the pier being fed by hand

And the ice-cream shop with twenty-six flavours

And the wooden rowing boats like slippers

And how Windermere is one place and Bo'ness another

And just a stretch of road joins them together

Of the hotel on the hill, the Bellsfield

And Schneider walking down to take the steamer

His butler following with breakfast on a silver tray

But mostly you think of the people

Drawn to water and how it looks in the rain

As if the shops were made of water

Of ducking into a doorway and carrying the smell of rain inside