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It began on the beautiful day,
that's what she called it, the beautiful day an angel stopped her on the Newbridge road and told her of Christ's desire for her. He flits from the butcher’s stall across Main Street
unbuttoning his beige coat. The usual need drives him to Kelleher's discreet side-door for his morning blessing, large Powers no water. Since the final fight, details now forgotten,
when pride sealed up their hearts and mouths they have made their own mute liturgy: the scraping of a chair announces dinner, the car engine turning signals Mass. The river field sinks into the dark,
raindrops drip from the slates of the cowshed, the paper sprawls across the kitchen table, it says it's hot in California. The doctor's pleasure on Saturdays
was to drive out to the hotel and behind its ivy-veiled facade its dark and crimson draperies to feel up the chambermaids the fillies de chambre he called them in an unreserved guest room. The boy in the photo hangs above the Atlantic
like a drop of rain from the edge of a leaf, paused in mid-air between diving board and water on tiptoe, arms spread like a dancer, balanced between this moment and the next. A bronzed man pirouettes
on the TV in the corner for his afternoon audience in the nation's dayrooms. I watch you walk down the South Circular Road.
In dappled shadows, leaves and sunshine you seem to dissolve into dancing dark and light, before you vanish in the bright distance into your efficient world of telephones, enquiries and tomorrow's appointments. The intravenous drip machine doggedly
hums through the night, breaks into fits of frantic ticks as if it wants to fight its way out of the room. |
Padraig O'MorainI have been writing poetry since around 1990. My work has appeared in Irish and British literary journals and has been published as a collection in The Blue Guitar (Salmon Poetry, 2011) and previously in a short collection called You've Been Great (Smith/Doorstop, 2008) which won a Poetry Business prize the previous year. I have an MA in English and Creative Writing from Lancaster University. CategoriesBooks Published
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