These Wayside Shrines

These wayside shrines
Stations of the metal cross
Are moments when a man is mad,
His head, a river of rush,
Depression of the clutch
And the push too far, too fast
The flowering of flame.
Life, metallic on the tongue,
Is tasted, then spat out.
And what of the innocents? What of them,
At the moment when a salesman, an angry man,
An over-taking superman with St Vitus in his toes,
At the moment when he daubs his cross
On the innocent's door?
How they gather wings unto themselves
To launch through windscreens,
Break upon the air,
Death wrapped round them like Jacob's ladder,
With no glance down,
They are gone.

And these wayside shrines,
These bouqueted markers
Where all of a family's rage is wrapped in cellophane
They make us pause,
For a second, slow ourselves
As we also spiral upwards
Into the blue places where we talk with spirits;
And behind, and below
The steel lament, of wives, of husbands, of all lovers
Left in the rend and rip of days,
Cats-eyes weeping
At these wayside shrines.

First Published, Crash,
Hodder Children’s Books 2004