Cregagh Road
Saturday and the street is lit up with activity,
sunlight on the western side, the arousal of that. There’s a preacher offering me healing on a glossy brochure, here’s an old man
watching me taking it and swiftly moving on,
a list of chores inside his head and a disciplined trot. There’s the bell of someone leaving the wool shop finishing her sentence as she steps out the door
with a bagful of thermal potential. The florists
have laid out their pastures, plastic pots of cyclamens and premature shrubs, one for this much or two for a little more. I stop
and scan for herbs – mint or thyme. Only
rosemary here, that I rub between finger and thumb, take a sniff with me, passed the bakery with its scone-stacked window and on
to Nicole’s Cafe. It’s small and full of people,
breakfast smells – sausages, bacon, the pork fattiness of that. They give me a scone from yesterday to have with my coffee, and I’m back out the door.
There’s a man outside, hovered over his full fry
in case I pinch a piece of potato bread with a lick of that brown sauce. And here’s everyone else, on their way towards Sunday – quick, before everything shuts.
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