Grey Bear Culture Magazine

It’s Monday morning
and I’m driving to work,
mind back somewhere
along Breary Lane.
The windscreen’s sticky—
sap from the trees above the car at home.
I should clean it
but it only smears
and I haven’t slept.
It’s 7:10.
I can still see
the ghost of my dad
walking
at the bottom
of Breary Lane.
Old song on the radio—
I know it,
it seeps into the commute.
Dad is
on the way

to buy a Yorkshire Post,
cloth cap
slightly askew.
Always that cap.
Old man, take a look at my life
I’m a lot like you were
I catch him
in the wing mirror—
shirt and tie,
that familiar waddle.

Strange—
I never wear a tie.
Never have.
Not out of principle,
just sheer bloody mindlessness.
I need someone to love me
the whole day through
Head down,
determined
to beat the newsagent.
Never had it delivered,
not until the end of Bramhope.
He’d try to slip away,
always trying to get back
to a house
from years ago—
some version of home.

I’ve been first and last
Look at how the time goes past
And I drive on,
leaving him
in the rearview blur

By Tim Boardman

– Tim Boardman, a poet and artist from Otley, West Yorkshire, crafts lyrical, intimate pieces that illuminate ordinary life, blending reflection, memory, and gentle storytelling into moments of subtle emotional resonance. A devoted family man, Tim balances his life between his roles as husband, father, teacher, and poet. His work celebrates those intersections — where care meets creativity, and where everyday life becomes poetry.