Thinking about the Point of Things on a Spring Evening on the Killyleagh Road


Sunlight shows up the dirt on the window –
bird shit, streaks of rain-stain from an overnight shower
put the pristine white of the PVC frame to shame –
a Belfast-bound flight disappears into Belfast,
flares and unflares in the soft blaze of a spring evening
like a second sun, or a one-off star
through this one-off, belter of a blue sky
as it’s radioed through its last approach
touching down to a province of ‘politics’ –
we’d call it something else if there was a word for it –
untouched by the in-your-face canvassing,
the prospect of door-to-door campaigning,
the lecturing in the electioneering
that’s going on and is ongoing now
as lampposts wear placards of touched-up,
photo-shopped, yet puffy, pasty-faced politicians,
cable tied, fastened to streetlight after streetlight
by some fastidious, unpaid recruit, with hope:
busy-bodies, do-gooders who’ve got done over.
MEP’s double chins belie their à la carte lifestyles –
scream ‘foie gras to start, fillet steak, then the cheeseboard’;
a taxing regime of lunches on tick to the taxpayer –
there they are, beside words like future, your, vote, for,
the same old same old from the same old-timers
while buccaneery young bucks bear the look of the duped;
dimpled, malevolent grins of hard-liners,
the streets of Crossgar are festooned with them,
wherever you look - left, right and centre –
like a festival without the festivities,
festivities without a festival,
or come to think of it, a festival without a festival,
but their greens and their blues will fester and fade
in the elements, the heat and the rain that will fall
through all the Baltic founderings of an Ulster winter,
rare days of summer’s sun-split trees, heat-woven lull,
as lampooners, gossipers, small talkers
lampoon, gossip and small talk it all up in their blogs.
Here, the chickens, however, take it all in their stride
as if the world is one big joke, a cakewalk –

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