Wilderspool Causeway

Managers go: migrate with phantoms
of the present on staircases in frames.
Who stops on the turn and sees the lifting?
Silverware and crow’s feet.

People come and go. Hotel rooms,
breakfast, silence in the lift.
Just standing. Black and white pictures,
complicated meanings. We stood

and looked, tried to prise a story
from the image, but couldn’t stand
for long enough to be the true eccentric.
Too self-conscious to go to ground

and lie on that great underlay
while guests pass, up and down,
and we watch. Just biographer-

Clough on paper, Shankly writing
with kindness to strangers. Truth
and fiction in the pictures.