Flaghopping

by Michael Pattwell

  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