Pogoing to Dearg Doom
at the junior disco,
you suggest taking a breather.
Blaming your Aran jumper,
but I know what you’re really up to,
when you sneak a snaky arm around my shoulder.
My first kiss – your brace bumping
against my teeth,
a tangle of tongues.
We come up for air,
and wonder if anyone
has witnessed this milestone.
I glimpse you in the intervening years
– with your wife in a Limerick hotel at breakfast,
evanescing into your car
at the Applegreen petrol pumps,
squinching into the courtroom
where I am working.
At the banklink en route
to where my life is now,
I realise that the middle-aged man
who doesn’t recognise the woman,
I don’t recognise myself anymore,
is you.
D71 Poet in Residence