Two Poems

THE FLIGHT

For a good half hour this morning, from five
till the mobile’s ringtone woke me in a sweat,
I was young again and Mammy was alive.
I was childless, clueless, bookless, setting out
alone, circuitously on my way to Shannon
with assignations and delays – and no passport,
I realized. I phoned home frantic with a plan.
Would Matty bike it to me at the airport?
But I couldn’t keep our mother on the line.
How come you cannot use a phone! I roared.
Then two nieces showed up, grown up, all smiles
in a red MG. I’d no notion who they were.
Yet they took me in. With luck I’d make my flight,
if Mammy now would ring me on my mobile.