If, as William Blake suggested, you can see the whole world in a grain of sand, then just imagine what looking at the construction of a car park will suggest!  Well, that was the sort of logic that prompted the following poem.
          My local leisure centre has decided to resurface an area used for car parking and has rooted out twenty trees, levelled the ground and resurfaced it with reinforced concrete or cement.  I never know which is the appropriate word.
          As is my want, I have been following all the construction details from my vantage point of a table outside the sports cafe while sipping my after-swim cup of tea.  This project is a major one and the car park has been closed for weeks, so I have had time to think about things!
          The workmen have now reached there stage of painting on the lines for the cars.  It could be that the car park reopens some time next week and then the fun will start.  It could be that everyone will behave with consideration and reserve, but that has not been my experience of how people park.
          I have always found public car parks fascinating - not that I have gone out of my way to visit them - especially in the way that people quite casually display the most selfish behaviour when parking their cars that they would despise if they saw it in other circumstances.
          Having disabled friends, and also because it is part of my character, I find it very difficult to pass by disabled parking spaces without checking if the disabled card has been displayed.  In car parks in supermarkets in Britain, I would always go up to the information desk if I had seen an illegally parked car and ask them to do something.
          I fully intend to do the same in my leisure centre and take a note of the car number plate too.  This is the first time that there have been designated spaces, I think because we now have an official car park and local by laws insist that for x number of able parking space there has to be one space for disabled customers.
          Perhaps I will need to do nothing as everyone may behave properly.  It is when they do not that I want to see how the staff in the leisure centre respond!
          Anyway, this poem is an amalgam of observation and prejudice!

Car Park Country

The weeping concrete’s salt is

washed away, revealing hard, smooth

stony canvas left for men to paint.

They squat and measure, check, reflect

and pluck the taut chalked string.

They draw equality until

there is no room for choice.

Space is boxed, with borders clear;

space not lined is all for flow –

and clockwise, if you please!

Each berth is numbered?  Why?

To give identity? 

                       To try and stop

encroachment by fat tyres

of those bombastic vehicles,

the rugged all-terrains that cope

so well with shallow

potholes in our urban roads?

Two spaces for disabled pose

alluring problems for the fit

and sturdy individuals who scorn

to be contained by some one else’s

paid authority and painted lines.

The spaces look quite small

to me, suggesting future opening

doors will touch and scratch

and irritate until the lines

must all looked at once again;

equality be re-defined;

the brush dipped deep

in paint, to bring

a momentary peace.

I would be interested to hear others' responses to this poem.  It obviously touches some sort of nerve in me, I simply wonder if anyone else feels the same way!