Traffic Flow

Trafc-ow, trafc stutters, trafc halt: Stalled faces lit by green light from the dash. Have I sat here before and experienced this dawn In some dream or other life, or does my imagination Confuse it with every other morning of every week? Taillights icker across in a landscape of no escape, Of embankments blocking off new apartment blocks: I spend more time here than I spend talking to my wife, I know the faces here better than I know my neighbours: The stoic Buddhists of the inner lane and the swines Using the bus lane to cheat their way in, music blaring. Those of us not yet beyond caring hope they get scurvy, Haemorrhoids, penile dysfunction, thrush and beriberi: Hope that the DJ on Spin FM chokes on his Cornakes, Hope the trafc will eventually move, hope we nally reach Wherever we are scurrying to in this slow-motion rush. Dream that one dawn well step from our car to scale The daffodil-encrusted bank, ignoring startled horns, As we shout, amid a skyline of cranes: Look on me, Lord, not just some motorist But a soul with free will, on my knees in my shirt sleeves, Raging against this sense of entrapment with my sts. - Dermot Bolger

From County Lives, a sequence of poems by Dermot Bolger, primarily in the voices of commuters undertaking everyday journeys across South Dublin County. Commissioned by South Dublin County Council through In Context 3 and funded under the Department of Environment, Heritage and Local Governments Per Cent for Art Scheme, these poems are being displayed in twelve locations across the County between Sept 2007 and Sept 2008. Their texts can be downloaded at www.incontext.southdublin.ie where comments may also be left for the author. Between the January 1st and March 30th 2008, people who live or work in South Dublin County are invited to submit to the author, via this website, up to three original poems that reect some aspect of their lives within the county. In September 2008, the full text of County Lives will be published, consisting of Dermot Bolgers original sequence interlinked with a representative cross section of submitted poems by other authors. Designed and produced by Yellowstone Communications Design 670 4200.