Poem

A Love Story

Last night we camped

on Boss Croker's acres,

tonight we cross

a river in spate,

in the miles between

a white-haired man

carries his gospel of brake-

pads and corrugated iron

like the sheets of asbestos

which we found to our cost

when we tramped

through Kippure and Ticknock.

We cough in unison,

we argue over direction

and though we had come

in search of rue des Favorites,

to take on the low down

of its honky-tonk bars,

we bear witness to unnamed

toxins, the domestique

who gestures like a friend,

as the halting ambition

that dithers and skews

and is brought to its knees

lets us gaze again

on brownfield and edgeland,

with all the aplomb

of Mir's captain.

Gerard Fanning