March 31, 2023Motorway Man
I want to tell you: I watched you sleep on the side of the road
with your chest held in the fireman’s hands. His face turned
from the traffic slowing down.
Not sure what I was witnessing at first—uninvited to your death.
As your breath rose up higher than the traffic fumes. Red arteries
clogging up the grey sat nav screen.
You—only doing what this day, this hour had been marked for you
to do. In your ordinary car, your pale blue retired Dunnes Stores
jumper a daughter might have bought for you for Father’s Day.
Had your wife lain it out on your bed the night before? Shopping list
folded in your trouser pocket, the word cocoa printed neatly
in black ink. The hankey she had ironed. The list (I imagine now)
of things she will have to learn to do without.
The skin that will form on the milk as it warms there on the stove
in the little silver aluminum pan. In the dark of their kitchen:
the blue flickering light.
from #79 - Irish Poets