There were memories from the old days
There were feelings from the new
And yet nothing seemed to happen in between.
There were big things and some little,
There were strong things and some brittle
And just scratching at the coalface in between.
There was love and there was laughter
There were rows and sorrow after
And just chipping at the coalface in between.
DRIVING TO THE DEBS
(For Deirdre )
Hair
Tied back in a pony-tail
And an impish face which
Lights up like a sunburst when she smiles.
A tanned knee
Peeps out from a designer cut
In faded jeans
And a loose long tee shirt
Proclaiming the message of the day
From some pop evangelist of the nineties. Now all gone.
On a joyous June evening
With the wind running through what was left
Of my hair
Through the open roof
I drove a vision. Bare shoulders
Traversed by thin red straps
And a plain gold chain
On a slender neck
Which dipped to definite symbols of womanhood,
Full and complete womanhood
Delicately clothed in scarlet
Neither hiding nor revealing
The grace and femininity
Of a beautiful young woman.
EARTH MOTHER
(Remembering my grandmother, Kate Crowley, 1874 - 1944)
I’ve only seen you through your daughter’s eye,
A child on your hip, another behind,
Going down the field to help the men to bind
The golden corn the reapers left to lie,
To stand the sheaves in stooks for wind to dry.
Some sadder days, my mother called to mind,
You gazed at the Atlantic and you pined
For sight of sons and daughters, with a sigh.
The twelve you raised have scattered round the world;
The five you lost you held close to your heart.
You took the force of each misfortune hurled;
You blamed not God when loved ones had to part.
The willow rods you planted have now grown.
The Earth has harvested from what you’d sown.
FIRST SIGHT
(For Seán)
A sunbeam through a skylight lay
Dappled and dancing on the pool today.
It sank and broke into fragments,
Like delicate shattered china pieces,
Shimmering below the surface.
When you swam into it
Your brown body
Was bathed in light.
It lifted you out of
The ordinariness of the world
And I remembered
The first time I saw you.
MAC NA FEIRME*
[i.m. John O’Donovan (Bawn)]
When you ploughed a furrow you ploughed it deep,
Turning up rich soil, shattering the stones,
Disturbing long-lost memories and bones
Of long-forgotten centuries asleep. You opened up their secrets; left them seep
To your enquiring mind that shaped and honed
Them into information that atoned
For eons of ignorance, heap on heap.
A man** said at your funeral you taught
Him all he knew. You schooled him as he grew
Into the sort of man you knew he sought
To be. You showed him how to think things through.
We harvested from every field you tilled.
No greater cenotaph could mankind build.
Footnotes
* Mac na Feirme means “son of the land” or “son of the farm”
** Thanks to Jim Nyhan, the man at the funeral.
NO HAND ON THE TILLER
(For Anna & Dai; i.m David Seán*)
(2nd December, 2003)
The wind in the chimney is caoining and wailing
The rain on the window panes knocks to come in;
The fire in the hearth burns low and is failing
As we watch and we long for your smile once again
The candles are trimmed casting shapes on the ceiling
Where they flicker and dance, biding time till the morn.
You lie there in peace and in death still appealing
You touched us and left within weeks of being born.
No journeys to islands; No headlands are rounded;
The moon on the water a mystery no more.
No hand on the tiller when foghorns are sounded;
Our hearts are all sundered like waves on the shore
You’ll never make stick-boats on streams to set sailing;
You’ll never make footprints for seas to erase;
The tide it is ebbing but rock pools are filling
With tears of the lonely you’ll never embrace.
Footnote
* David was for his short life a member of the fishing community in Schull, a small town in West Cork. Hence the references to the sea in this poem
OFFSPRING
Sometimes I am annoyed by you
When you strut your over-independent stuff
And leave me frustrated
Because you hadn’t taken in
All that I had taught you.
Just like me really,
Half a century ago.
But I don’t tell you that,
Nor do I tell myself.
Then, sometimes, not too often,
Something gets too much for you
And you find me.
You, quiet and silent
And ready to cry.
Me, detached and indifferent
And ready to teach you a lesson.
Until you tell me the problem,
Ask for my advice and eventually
Cry on my shoulder.
And I hug you
And I hold you
And I help you,
Taking and sharing your problem
Because you are my son.
REJECTION
White fringed tumbling green translucence;
Sea mist rising from the rocks
Beaten by the sea-pulse into ragged rows
Below the cliffs that boomed
Like an embattled battery
Firing salvos at the coming storm
As if to drive it off. An irregular line of foam
Marked the flow of the mid channel
Between the islands
And huge raindrops
Baring the taste of the sea,
Their birth mother,
Fell on an upturned face
And washed away
The wetness of the memories
Of you and of your rejection of me.
I miss you my son.
SEÁN
The first time I saw you Your almost black hair
Was tinged with streaks of burnished gold
And you lay in another’s arms. A trace of a smile
Twitched the corners of your mouth
When you looked at me. I felt at that moment
That you were special.
And you are.
The swallows under the eaves
Have come and hatched
And fledged and flown
Many times. For endless summers we've watched
Cygnets shed their drab brown
For dazzling white
And fly to other lakes
To other seashores. Each year the brown fields
Have turned green, then brown again,
Then into golden stubble.
All those years I've watched you grow.
I've watched you fall asleep at night.
I've watched you rise again refreshed
With each new sun.
Somet
imes You call me by my name,
Sometimes
You call me Daddy,
But I will always
Call you my son.
STONE WALL
(For A.)
A long grey limestone wall
And I am on the north side.
Sometimes,
When a winter frost
Has loosed a boulder
And made a breach,
I can see through
To the sunshine;
I can see you.
Sometimes,
When the caoin
Of the wind through
The crazy stone jigsaw
Pauses for breath,
I hear the gurgle
Of a mountain stream
Falling over pebbles
To a spring meadow.
Or is that
Your running laughter?
Here and there
On my stark grey wall
Are splashes of lambent colour
Where the roots of primroses
Have turned their backs
To the sun
And, drawn by the warmth
Of my love for you,
Found a path
Through the tiny labyrinth passages
Between the stones
To come to flower
To remind me of you.
SURPRISED
(For C. – 1.47 pm, 11/12/2002, on getting a divorce)
Did you feel it, girl,
Warm June sunshine on your face,
The river below the bridge a deep blue?
No clouds on the distant bank.
Were you surprised!
Was it wasted, girl?
His call confirmed it wasn’t.
“Where are you, Dad,” he said and then I knew
I would do it all again.
And I was surprised.
Did you feel it, girl,
The east wind on the river?
Crossing the bridge back to the beginning
I felt its keen paper cut.
And I was surprised!
TOM
(Who disappeared, 8th January 1992)
Did you leap, Tom,
into the swirls and eddies
of the tidal race
off Tarbert Pier?
Or did you slip quietly
beneath the still and stagnant surface
of the lifeless pools
in a backwater
below the pulsing power-station
on Tarbert Island?
Or on that bitterly cold and windy
January morning
did a sudden squall
blow you onto the tide
which carried you downstream
to the sea
past Carrigafoyle Castle?
Do your bones
now lie
stripped and waterlogged
on the sandy sea-bed
below Scattery Island?
Or were you sucked
And sliced into nothingness
in the vortex
of the spinning screw
in the wake of a passing ship?
Will we ever know, Tom?
We searched for you
among the river-washed
smooth boulders
studded along the Shannon shore.
We poked
with stout walking-sticks
cut from the bare branches
of the sycamores
overhanging your cottage
at the flotsam
floating in on the tide
hoping, yet fearing,
that we had found you.
Once
we saw and smelled
the rancid remains
of an aborted calf
roughly wrapped in the harsh fibres
of an old jute sack
thinking that bloated
visceral jetsam was you.
You slipped away from us, Tom,
as quietly as you had lived
without even the formality of a funeral
to ease our guilt.
We had never asked you
when you greeted us
with your kindly uncle's smile
how you were;
how you felt;
how was life for you.
We 're left now
without even a gravestone
to mark your passing.
Once I peered, Tom,
into the deep black waters of the river
and saw a face peering back at me
for a bowel-loosening moment.
But it was only
the pale reflection of
a winter moon.
UPDRAFT
(For P. McC. who came to Cúirt, 2010
- almost nine years after her death)
Taking a break from Cúirt culture
we took the air on Spiddal Strand.
A mother and child prepared a kite for flight,
held it aloft in solemn offering
to the wind Gods
and with a few manipulative tugs
it took the air,
rose, hovered and dervish danced,
weaving and dipping
in the stiff April breeze.
A thin nylon cord kept it
tied to the Earth
as it darted
about the sky,
snapping and cracking
in its frantic struggle to free fly
to foolish self-destruction.
That cord
was its anchor-chain to existence.
Without it, it could not have filled
with Connemara wind
to lift it above the world.
The night before, at the Festival Club,
We had renewed friendships
in your name. We had toasted your life
and talked of you,
and how you had drifted,
dragging your anchor,
tasted reality in rejection,
despaired,
then cut the line
to fly free
and disappear into the sun
in a sudden, violent, updraft
of red hot air.
THE WORKROOM
(For A.P., my dressmaker mother)
Your workroom
was like a second womb
where we swam
in the birth-waters of your attention
on a quiet street of a small town,
in a cosy house with a tiny front room,
its large looking-glass,
your swing-foot sewing machine,
a cutting-out table
and an old chest of drawers,
bought by my father at an auction
for five shillings,
packed tight with
and piled high with
patterns and remnants
of all shades and colours
and the full makings
of coats and dresses
and all sorts of sartorial conceptions
Taking light from the window
you snipped and shaped
and stitched and sewed.
Sometimes you sang
a happy song
as your thimble tapped out the tune on the timber tabletop.
Sometimes you sang "Noreen Bawn"
then laughed kindly
at our childrens' tears.
You never stopped.
Even when you packed us off to bed
our lullaby was the whirring
of your Singer sewing machine.
If you weren't there
the silence disconcerted us
and we held our breaths
until we heard your industry again.
On wet evenings
we sat on the square of red lino
busily picking up pins
with a magnet salvaged from
an old bicycle dynamo
or we earned our first pennies
picking tacks from a pleated skirt
with the head of a common pin
or running to the open fire
for the flat iron followed by
the pungent steam from your ironing cloth
as you pressed your creations into final shape.
For music we strung
taut threads through the brass handles
of the over-laden drawers
and twanged our tuneless symphony
until, unable to take it anymore,
you gave us tuppence for an ice cream –
if we were lucky.
If you hadn't tuppence
you spread sugar on fresh bread and butter
and sent us outdoors to play
in the evening sunshine.
When the ladies came for a fit-on
we waited resentfully in the hall,
eager ears listening to the fragments
of grown-up conversation that leaked
from behind the half-closed creaking door
weighed down with half-completed garments
or alterations from the local drapers' shops.
If you spoke in whispers
we knew some deep secret
was being revealed
and we felt excluded
by adult-speak.
Today,
you leaned heavily on my arm
as we followed the blue tile
to the hospital lift.
You, with your seventy eight year old
baby steps.
Me, remembering you dancing
on the red lino
in the womb-warmth
of your workroom.
THE JUDAS KISS
(Remembering the day I took my mother to the nursing home.)
Her slim fingers, sensitive to imperfections,
Traced a seam in my jacket.
The expert seamstress she was
Picked lint from my shoulder.
“Close the top button,” she said,
“You look smart in that”
And Judas kissed her lined cheek.
Outside the window, primroses peeped.
A yellow-breasted blue-tit
Comes to our window every morning.
She preens herself on the ledge, observing.
A feather in the seam, where the yellow meets the blue,
Seems perpetually ruffled.
Then she flies at the glass,
Trying to come in.
She tires and flits to the trees
And to the shelter of the fuchsia
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