Hope in Passing
By Helen Gillespie Brown
You leave at the tail end of a fading afternoon
in a town you ended up in by accident and the
moss continues its intermittent creep against
your speckled patio slabs, a scatter of daisies
slipping under granite swathes of cloud and light
slants through blinds you’d planned to replace
at the weekend and the woman next door unlocks
her sunset orange bicycle from its rack and a
boy scores a hat trick on a site of derelict flats and
the neighbour across the street holds a letter from
a son he still loves, and you close your eyes to frayed
edges of days, dissolving of ways, wonder why you
are passing on in this place, as waves of traffic up
the northern road batter a windswept shore and
you sail through the city’s core on a boat painted with
your Gaelic name, to find your island home again.
Helen Gillespie Brown
Helen Gillespie Brown is a Dublin based writer from Scotland, who works in the charity sector. She was previously a finalist in the Times’ Travel Writing Competition and has published several articles. Her poems on Afghanistan and Rwanda have been longlisted in the UK’s National Poetry Competition. She is currently compiling a poetry collection on themes of displacement, transition and concepts of home.
Photo credit: tommao wang
