Stations of a burnt out landscape

The landscape is full of last times,
They hang like Stations of Cross
By every turn. Fireworks explode,
Dogs whine out of tune, words of friendship
Ping like playstations. I'm stuck
In the last act of a road movie
In Arizona or some lurid state
I've never been.

Red light and purple shadows, triffid plants
Di Chirico shaped wrecks and vengeful vegetation,
Rise all around; flaming moments
That won't last unhinge me. I drum
My fingers on this endgame, impatient
For the credits and a grey street
Blank of images.

Soul Journeys

I saw your white bus this morning
Sailing down our street, calling
For all your old companions. I wondered
If souls like yours have wheels, if you now
Skate swiftly through that other world. You
Have gone before me; I'm stuck here waiting
For some ghost bus, no longer
On anyone's list, not old nor young
Neither winter or summer.

Clouds catch the meagre sun and a girl
In a wheelchair not quite the same as yours
Laughs at our dog. Moments link each other
Like giddy schoolgirls and I try tracing
The paths we surely took, the sunny clearings
Where I must have missed something, where
Perhaps you smiled
While I was looking down
Into my bag of worries.

Máiríde Woods lives in Dublin. Her poems and short stories have been widely published.