Posts – HMHmmmmm

National Car Test

By Lyn Hagin Meade

Car tests,
The leaving cert all over again
But I forgot to study
And the wrong questions came up.

My stomach churns as I sit behind the glass
Like in the maternity nursery
Seeking out my baby
“Yes, that’s mine there – the silver one”
Being rocked too and fro ten feet in the air.

A frowning mechanic, intent on calibrating figures
Makes me nervous
Is it terminal?
“What’s your registration” he asks,
And I can’t remember in my agitation.
Waiting for the results
Is like scratching a lottery ticket.

I sit in the car and shake afterwards.
Passed for this year.

The woman I sat beside earlier
Goes by my window and we don’t acknowledge
Each other. Our mutual support group
Was fleeting
For the length of time it took to certify 
I can spend another year on the road.

Arts & Humanities

January 10, 2021

Poetry: Pandemic

Pandemic

by Lyn Hagin Meade

It’s been a year now,
A year of listening to the news
For the hype and the numbers
For plotting graphs and learning logarithms
While the beat of our lives slurs and bucks

We are wondering when we can stop
Smelling the flowers and hearing the birds.
We want the tang of runway grease;
To hear the hum of voices and
Receive small human gestures

We are wondering when the rainy day bank account
Won’t loom so large
And freedom will be an extra day off.
We want to lament the stuffed carriages
And sing in the snaking motorway jam
When apathy can be a dalliance again.

This is war, without the blackout curtains
Togetherness, without a friend
We are agents for an invisible
The unequal parts of us are naked –
We are buried in our reduction.

And what if the sunlight never comes?
If we keep spinning the pedals
On a soul cycle to nowhere?
Wasting away waiting

A future postponed
With vague remorse.

Poetry: National Car Test

National Car Test

By Lyn Hagin Meade

Poetry: Pandemic

Pandemic

by Lyn Hagin Meade

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