Maurice

A poem I've been working on for several years . . .

Maurice is standing where he can see the road;
Maurice keeps alert, likes to see what may be coming.
He does not want to be taken by surprise.

The day, as ever, is a hot one;  for a while
Maurice studies the shimmering poles that stand in line along the road,
each one topped by its football nest of swallows.
A few of the birds are sitting along the wires;
their long tail feathers twist and trail as they jostle for places,
but nothing else is moving at all.

Maurice lifts the cigar from the front pocket
of his dusty jacket, sniffs it and taps it,
returns it to its place.
It is not yet time for cigars.  There is a little shade
where he is standing, but even so
he fans himself briefly with his denim cap
before covering again his thinning hair.

From behind him, a sudden cough: some kind of machine.
Maurice looks round, but there is nothing to see.  He knows that
over on the other side of the hill
Marco’s men will be harvesting the tobacco,
and hanging the yellowing leaves to dry;  while,
stretched out ahead of him into the haze,
the road he has come to watch remains empty.

Maurice waits a while longer, kicking his boots against a stone.
Most days he comes to stand here, hoping to see
that red cloud of dust,
something riding the dirt road towards him.
Nothing much ever comes out this far,
just now and again a car, a truck, a pick-up; maybe Father Elias
with the minibus from the Parish House.

Each sudden and seldom plume of dust
is a lift and a catch to his heart,
and always he is disappointed, and still, and yet, he waits,
waits for the son to whom, all those years ago,
he waved a good-bye and blessing, waits for
his smiling prodigal boy who left this dry land
to tread the golden sidewalks of the city.