The M50 wasn’t finished then, but she took the slip up to it, 
Gravel, Sand, and Rocks, and Soil, like pimples on the surface
Of the foothills joined to make a desert, making straight a highway 
The slip became an entry,
She joined.

Dublin reached its jumbled limbs across, athwart, behind her, 
The road, it shrank between the massing cones on either island, 
As baleful orange eyes which winked a hint of coming hardship, 
Ranged around her, 
She paused.

His road was straight and highly finished, soon coming to a junction, 
The M1 curving, heading West, began to take him from where, 
She, lost between, the space between, one island and another, 
Began to turn her car around,
She looked back. 

But part of her decision was, to follow yet a highway, 
Which he, in turning back afresh, couldn’t see propel him South, 
A road which neither knew would turn, and lead back to each other, 
A road that each could eas’ly see, had torn the land asunder, 
A road that didn’t bode for ill, yet promised nothing plenty, 
A road they both began to drive, a road begun on empty.

The road became a steady stream, extending North and South, 
And Dublin’s glinting lights receded, Newry bypassed westward, 
Swords and Rush, and Lusk and Skerries, barely taken notice, 
Of, 
She hurried. 

The course now set, he hurried too, not stopping in the Orchard, 
Till chance, or brakes, or Ros’leen’s fate, caught his car and flipped it, 
Over, up, and gently down, to land before Jonesborough, 
He crawled out and started walking, to, 
Wherever.

She was coming swiftly up, now passing through the wee one, 
But stopping short before the crossing, put the car in neutral, 
And walking cross the barley fields, she gathered ears from gleanings, 
And stood where he stood, at the lough, and saw, 
You go.

Back beyond where they both stood, back to the road they’d travelled, 
Which joining north and south in one, bisected by the border,
Formed a cross, on which he set out North, and asked her would she follow?
 And she replied, not looking back, 
I will, 
Go.