Pause For Poetry: EN ROUTE TO LIMERICK By Michael Hawkes

The road I’ve always followed follows me,

Even going round the bend it’s there to see.

Being double yellow-lined

It has been a proper bind

I couldn’t turn from where or what I used to be.

I tried losing it by going very fast,

Not knowing if my driving skills would last,

I had big scares and thrills

On the steepest of the hills…

But there’s no future found in fleeing from the past.

Now, in the rearview mirror I see me

And behind the haggard face a history;

I also see I can’t outrun

All the wicked deeds I’ve done,

But there’s redemption at the toll booth, luckily.

Yes, I’ll pay and get a token at the booth,

On the motorway is where I’ll find the truth,

That hasty overtaking

Is a risky undertaking

And the crosses in the ditches are the proof.

So, keeping to the right I dawdle on

Not knowing what I’ve done that was so wrong;

Hell yes! I’ve paid a price

For every little vice

And the penance, like this journey, has been long.

26/09/23 – Hawkes

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Michael Hawkes was a survivor of all the world’s wars. He learned (and loved to rhyme) by torturing the hymns he had to sing at school. A retired West Coast fisherman living in Montreal from 2013 to 2024, he was an unschooled Grandpa Moses writing an average of five poems every week.