Poem of the Week: Back to School

A teacher all your adult life,
each year you met the first-day kids
nervous in the classroom doorway –
their half-empty bags, their hand-me-down
skirts, their freshly ironed shirts
strange and stiff around their narrow shoulders.
Now, years on, you meet them still,
transformed, reimagined, everywhere:
in the coffee shop, the checkout queue,
on the corner of the street up town,
walking the dog, pushing a pram,
waiting for the traffic lights to change.
And, late one evening, heading home,
at a Garda roadblock where, minutes before,
a fatal accident has taken place
(the flashing blue light lending the scene
a slow-motion, underwater pace),
you roll your window down to see,
in the face that now replaces your own
puzzled expression, the briefest of hints
of doubt, is it, of hesitation,
and want to say, but can’t any more —
such are the rules of the grown-up world —
‘You’re OK, take your time now, you’re doing great.’

Pat Boran is a poet, editor and short film maker. His new collection of poems, Hedge School, is due in November from Dedalus Press