Elaine Gaston

Cycling Home from the Rotterdam Bar

It was a faff to get back from the Rotterdam
– I had my bike so was heading on home –
while the others stood waiting for a taxi
you hopped on behind and took a backie
on my bag rack, legs splayed out while I steered.
Three sheets to the wind we sailed through the back streets,
with a couple of pints in us we were in slo-mo
like under the strobe light at the disco.

So at a check point in May Street, no worries
– even as you swayed behind me on the carrier –
full of Dutch Courage we were invincible,
they waved us on through like a bike was invisible,
then called to our backs just as we disappeared,
‘Hey that’s dangerous. You’ve no lights on your rear.’
When over your shoulder you fired back the quip,
‘Aye sure, s’ok, for look, my arse lights up.’

The Lie of the Land

Your laugh, a curlew’s call,
in the back room where we sit
to the small hours.
Stories our mothers told us,

stories, our own,
ramble off, stop
at every last whin bush,
diverge, converge again.

Roddens through the moss,
townlands in our minds,
phrases turn like a sod,
words churn like the butter

we used to know,
as we roll and heuch,
slap rowdy hands on thighs.
Wild she-wolves in native oak groves

we try to find again
the lie of the land,
the different names for different fields,
fallow, meadow, ploughed.

New paths over old tracks,
opening up blocked roads.