by DS Maolalai
A Trip
I’m somewhere in Meath or Kildare with a man to assess an insurance claim.
we’re discussing the injury – somebody walking apparently tripped.
the drain has been patched over since.
with cement to stop anyone tripping.
he wants to know why, because that’s evidence.
I have nothing to say except “somebody tripped” so we look at the path and repairs. around us.
it’s a housing estate out in Newbridge and never not raining.
there’s guys up on ladders, clearing the gutters of caked-earth.
Joe says hello and curses the damp in his gloves.
the insurance man doesn’t comment.
he is no mystic – no mind toward the future.
he jigsaws together what has already happened.
and who should have known it might.
Solstice
standing in sunset
behind the brick back wall of maintenance dispatch
on saturday.
the motorbikes are stacked in the bay
like teeth on an old five-comb.
we take a minute
while the phones at our desks ring other emergencies,
and talk about what we would rather
be doing.
matt offers cigarettes to each of the boys
and to ciara.
I hurry one down.
you can almost tell time by the shadows of buildings.
light between stones at a neolithic solstice
the staggered approach of shift-change.
An unpolished shoe
they work together
carefully, cutting up weeds between cobble
like surgeons attacking a tumour.
fresh, healthy sunburn has thickened their cheeks
to something approaching the toe on an unpolished shoe.
I meet them onsite – ask what they’ve done
and where they still have to get to.
I don’t like to criticise their work.
they do it better than I ever could,
these healthy young immigrant men.
felipe’s getting married this summer.
we have to find someone
to take over his round for the week.
DS Maolalai has been described by one editor as “a cosmopolitan poet” and another as “prolific, bordering on incontinent”. His work has been nominated fourteen times for BOTN, ten for the Pushcart and once for the Forward Prize, and released in three collections; “Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden” (Encircle Press, 2016), “Sad Havoc Among the Birds” (Turas Press, 2019) and “Noble Rot” (Turas Press, 2022)