The only avocado in Recess

(Reflection on selfish flocking to the west)

The only avocado in Recess sits there in the shop among the other fruit with the proud head on it, waiting for the

Bank Holiday, when it will be plucked from a wood-turned bog oak bowl on a slate of Connemara marble by a hand that had held the wheel of the Range Rover since it left the capital a short three hours ago.

Himself and Herself will be down ‘til Monday evening — the barrister’s wife

And the barrister’s husband, head to toe in gear from the Avoca do

The scrawny sheep past Maam shat out a few pellets stepped back and gawked as a mill worth of cars sped by

In less than an hour.

With big well-coiffed King’s Inn heads on all of them, the sun, sending a reflection off the expensive shades and bouncing off a rainbow, the only avocado quaked. Soon It will have its purpose.

Soon it will be loved unlike the bananas which will end up in someone’s sandwich by morning.

An hour later, it is in a handwoven shopping bag from Powerscourt, inhaling the wax off the Barbour and the ink of the only copy of The Guardian in Recess.

Shaken this way and that in the sturdy off-roader that never sees the other side of a ditch. And although avocados cannot read, it knows that is an accessory to an act of selfishness.

A source of pleasure for those who are normally welcome‘cept for this time.

They say it took a thousand

Years to rob these valleys of

The sound of children laughing, Echoing across the lakes.

They say now, it could just

Take a weekend to rob us

Of all those who remember the bad times.