A Busy Busy BEE

O travellers from
Somewhere else to here
Rising from Sheffield Station
And Sheaf Square
To wander through
The labyrinths of air

Pause now, and let
The sight of this sheer cliff
Become a priming-place
Which lifts you off
To speculate
What if..?
What if..?
What if..?

My day today in Sheffield consisted of part baggage and part Red Cross parcel deliveries of Gulha to lovely daughter J in her new student digs; followed by a half-day induction to help me 'pupate' into a fully-fledged busy busy BEE for Design Council / Cabe (their acronym for their new national worker drones of 'Built Environment Experts').

Anyway, after a dawn start (I hate being late), I arrived too early at sleepy J's place - all this after a lovely but uneventful drive over the Snake Pass and sun rise over Ladybower Reservoir in Derbyshire.

After leaving J to catch up on some beauty sleep (she had been partying late last night, and was working today at 11:30), I was greeted by this delightful poem after I parked up and then went looking for my hive-mates.

By ex poet laureate Andrew Motion, the poem graces the side of a Sheffield Hallam University building. I later found out, it was commissioned as part of the 2007 'Off The Shelf' literature festival.

'What If?...', is one of three actual poems adorning city buildings care of various years of this festival: Jarvis Cocker's 2005 'Trashed on Cider' is installed on some student flats; Whilst my own favourite, (though I didnt get to see it today), is a Roger McGough love poem to Sheffield installed onto the glass of the Winter Garden on Valentine's Day 2006. This ends with some classic lines that I feel a great affinity with though:

I like this place
my son a student here
City of space
open skies and stars
Sheffield
Twinned with Mars