There are no cars parked outside Nanny Quinn’s,
the barges lie silent in the cooling summer, as
Royal Canal water, seeped in the clays of peat

and prickly gorse, glides iridescent in cloud
tufted sunshine. Our lone heron stately sentinels
among companionable moorhen and the swift

swerve of blue gloss-tinted swallows.
The Waterway’s towpath has been re-laid, and
where once horses dragged barges through

Abbeyshrule and returned commercially laden
to the Dublin docks, now in the new logistics
and imposed contingencies of lockdown

and social distancing, I take my routine canal walk.
Old dusted down Raleigh bikes and children
wearing safety helmets gather; a father cycles by

in shorts and summer shirt, his daughter on the
carrier seat, familiar now to his tack and turn,
sitting in the safe swerve and glide of her pre-bridal
dance.