Maurice

Maurice is standing where he can see the road;

Maurice keeps alert, likes to see what may be coming.

He does not want to be taken by surprise.

The day, as ever, is a hot one;  for a while

Maurice studies the shimmering poles that stand in line along the road,

each one topped by the football nest of swallows.

A few of the birds are sitting quietly on the wires,

their long tail feathers twisting and trailing;

and nothing else is moving at all.

Maurice lifts the cigar from the front pocket

of his dusty jacket, sniffs it and taps it,

returns it to its place. 

It is not yet time for cigars.  There is a little shade

where he is standing, but even so

he fans himself briefly with his denim cap

before covering again his thinning hair.

From behind him, a sudden cough: some kind of machine.

Maurice looks round, but there is nothing to see.  He knows that

over on the other side of the hill

Marco’s men will be harvesting the tobacco,

and hanging the yellowing leaves to dry;  while,

stretched out ahead of him into the haze,

the road he has come again to watch remains empty.

Maurice waits a while longer, kicking his boots against a stone.

Most days he comes to stand here and to hope for

that red cloud of dust,

something riding the dirt road towards him. 

Nothing much ever comes out this far,

just now and again a car, a truck, a pick-up; maybe Father Elias

with the minibus from the Parish House.

Each sudden and seldom plume of dust

is a lift and a catch to his heart,

and always he is disappointed, and still, and yet, he waits:

waits for the son to whom, all those years ago,

he waved a good-bye and blessing, waits for

his smiling prodigal boy who left him to tread

the golden streets of the city.