Every school run morning
Comes with a warning, you
Get a fraction of the metered price
After the owner got the cut-price contract
And takes his healthy harpooned whale bite
Shitty old rundown car, clunk and click and clack
Every engine-rattle trip, “He disnae want tae
Spend a hunner n fifty quid on it.”
Three stops – Laurieston, Bainsford, Stenny
Then straight on through to their
Primary School, three kids with special needs
Different pupil breeds,
Different future song patterns
Different tides of the oncoming day
Pick up the gruff been-there 50s matron
Seen so many different drivers leave
Because of the tiny money insult hovering
She now tells the kids every day is an adventure
With a new driver and new engagement rules
First best stop Laurieston, pick up wee blondie
Fire stunner cracker, six years old if she’s a day
Down’s Syndrome surmised, chaperone
Says nothing with grim nod and pro style
Tight guardian lips sink no genetic ships
Here comes somewhere can’t quite place
Eastern European mummy and daddy
Carrying their blazing sunshine ray of home
Wriggling in happy hold-tight arms to the
Private hire car, strap her in, “Good to go,”
Wee glasses-girl blondie thumbs-up ready
Kiss and say goodbye, smile nod lovingly,
And off we crack and rattle and go
To our next destination, but it’s always
Wee Esma I like the best, so beautiful,
Smile so unhurt by reality and pure
Be like that for her whole however-long life
Parents got thrown a wild card in the
Extra-chromosome lottery, she’s
Happier than you and me, never a
Word or minute to decode, always
An up-front smileshow, always meant,
Pure depth and resonance register
Eightsome reel of tireless joy, storm
Of Scottish-European mainland jig
But no romanticising life deficiencies or
Shocked or frightened parents
With their lives and purpose rewired,
They were given a beautiful blue-bolt gift
From countless abstract genetic chances
And I drive carefully, heedful of three
Wee bundles of eternal familial comfort
But when I drop Esma home at night
And a parent rushes up to happily greet her
With her younger sister eager to see her sibling
I just sit there in tiny-sun-ultraviolet awe
As Esma is scooped up from the booster seat
Hugged to a happy headkisser parent’s breast
Overjoyed wee sis maybe three jumping up
And up and hugging her small sister’s feet
And legs and whatever she can get an
Eager cuddly handful of from knee high
To a grasshopper height of all perfection
And I feel lucky to be look-warmed by the
Heatrays pouring through the confused
Early evening, nuclear strength family hooray
Feeling internal ice floes groaning, cracking,
Sailing off to some climate-changed warming sea
Far adrift off the islets of beauty-fried cynicism
And the only perk of the moaning exploited
Soon-to-be-discarded job is the daily chance
To get stunburned by such close proximity
To Beauty Ground Zero
And be thankful
For just a tiny
Taste of all the
Tomorrow
Lollipops
In
The
Wide
Lucky
World.
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