On the Escalator
with my Daughter

In the garish brightness where rows of shops
flash from the mall’s central hub, directionless
in all directions, we rise on the escalator’s silence
to the food court, traipse down the stairs and repeat
and repeat, until the sense of being still yet still
in motion is learned enough that we can stop
to order chicken nuggets on a polystyrene tray

and I think how Lewis’s of Glasgow introduced a lift
back in the seventies, how I felt lightness gather
in my body as if my bones had risen and left only
breath behind – a one-off wonder, as my mother
had shopping to rush and everyday miracles
to leave for another day, for when we sit to eat
from this plastic table shooting round the sun.

Rob Mackenzie

If you have any comments on this poem, Rob Mackenzie would be pleased to hear from you.