Poem 216

Hutt motorway under Khandallah … the luckless one in the end-of-day lottery, the dread of being singled out, of an interruption in the accustomed flow, momentary empathetic twitch of passersby only salt in the wound …

( I like the rhyme on appeased/breeze/sea – and of course the wordplay of the title … )

Verge Of Tears

There's a woman standing beside her car
         on the motorway
trying to flag someone down her arm
rising and falling in a flabby
SS salute

eyes too embarrassed to meet ours
she looks beyond us to the next car
            or the next
not wanting to see how we think she's failed
to keep some angry piece of her engine
         appeased oiled
             going round
                  or up and down
and now has been sent into a corner 
of the evening
lapped by water and the breeze
hills where the suburbs turn their backs
on the sea with crowded top-heavy 
shoulders of sunlight

         car slewed on a diagonal
         she waits on the verge
         of tears
buckling under the blankness
of our stares