CHRISTMAS, AND THE RUSH HOUR

The bus I am sitting in has a full belly.

Bursting thoughts float like ghosts.

The man next to me nods in his book

a bottle peeps from his jacket.

Ruffled mother, pram-deep in plastic bags

and rolls of Christmas paper

gives her baby some sticky drink.

Hush now.

While tinselled teenagers like mosquitoes

giggle in the rear.

We pass the cemetery, slowly;

eighteenth century I have read on the stones;

for their day, clip-clop, clip-clop.

Hollied logs. Braziers popping chestnuts.

Mulled-wine. And the goose is getting fat

Clipity-clop, clipity-clop.

Horse-dung, carriages, carts.

Now rain drips through trees

I rub the misty window

see between the lip of a cloud

a sickle moon.

Nothing much changes… except

the traffic lights are on green.

Maureen Weldon

First Published, Poetry Scotland