on the road

by Aonghas MacNeacail

on the road we took yesterday
there was no ditch between track
and the broad fields of grass
where the township’s cattle
grazed - there were cows, but
we didn’t know each other, for
i was only visiting those
shadows that uttered not one
word about the days we had had
and no familiar bellow came
from cold stone - wasn’t that how
beguiling clocks brought
a ghostly life to the dream
that rose from a desire to keep
alive the pastures where
young men and their sweethearts
began engaging in tenderly
clumsy acts of courtship, as if
they were boldly confident,
but we, now, were dilatory
slow, liable to show the story’s
back, lest the ditch is no longer
as it used to be, but covered
in a woven plaid of grass