Against the Flow

Once a driver violating the Code
reversed the car to shout Do you want
to get yourself killed?
but sped off before I could answer.

I pass the Ark Church daily,
their giant mock-up syringe
Injecting HOPE into society
parked up permanently, it seems

& daily I think of Carnegie,
his library built exactly
where the road turns:
gold sandstone, pediments, purpose

union buster
, wiped as I smile
at McPeake’s Professional Pest Control sign:
eternally a mouse in Hawaiian shirt & shades
carries a stickered suitcase,

departing. ‘Cant breathe last May
sprayed on the old GAA club
in yellow, ‘George Floyd RIP
first thought’s always apostrophe,

lack thereof. Dodging gutter bones or glass,
these are the days when
a low horn sounds, the shadow
of a bus looming over me so

I make my cogs move faster,
road gleaming dark as a river
& I hit the sweet point, these days,
marvelling

to have reached here -

Nancy Graham