Your Sunday Poem

This by Nick Laird from his book, "On Purpose." 

Statue of an Alerman in Devon 

You have to drive five counties
and come over the hill to Salisbury Plain,
pass the cloud-shadow grazing
on hayfields and A-Roads and grass,
and decelerate into the very last town
where a sign points to the Ice Factory,
and in front of you is sea.

You have to take the second left
to find yourself, lost, of course,
in a hamlet with one phone box
and a bare stretch where seagulls peck
at the bronze feet of an alderman
who watches, like some soul who outlived,
in the end, everyone he loved.