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1 In the country where those who can’t speak and those with nothing to say choose to live, an old man leads a moon-eyed mare.
He can tell a thunderstorm’s coming by the wind as it soughs round his earth-sod house. There is much he can teach us.
But it’s the children, the desert children, we must listen for first, the sing-song tricks of their games, their word for stranger.
You’ll know when you hear it. It means cousin, which means they’ll share their bread, their fire, the clothes on their back.
It’s a word you’ll hear them call out to dogs, deer, geese, a word they’ll honour you with should you be lucky enough meet them.
2 In the pebbled river, in the wind as it fingers rods of grass, in the circumspect whisper of blown sand, another life: the voice of an old woman perhaps, or a man scything hay.
In the distance a windmill swings its bone white arms. This you don’t hear. If we close our eyes it won’t be there.
Reality can never exist through one sense alone. Think of the strained faces of the deaf, the inward look on a blind face.
The world suggests itself continually and we respond, continually making our way over mountain and desert to tended lawns and raked ponds where a gardener talks to himself in his sleep.
in collection Another Place, 2007 ISBN 978-1844713-97-4, Salt Publishing
said you only had to look into his eyes to see a stranger; a doorstep child they called him, who made no sense however hard they tried.
They remembered his collections of things in jars, old nails, bone bits, ring-pulls, the errands for the widow his lame mum cleaned for who wouldn’t hear a bad word said against him.
They frowned and shook their heads at the cat found in the dyke, the coping stone chipped from the bridge and heaved into the track, the silly laugh, the dry stare if you showed him kindness.
Nor were they surprised when his name came up although he’s long since left the parish and the brick house on the marsh was derelict where once his dad bred pigeons and his no good bloody brother came and went.
They knew a thing or two they said, not telling when the police came to the door, for that was years ago when their unkind stares could never have anticipated this, his picture on the News and everybody’s knowing nods beginning to make some sense of things at last.
in collection Living On The Difference, 2004 ISBN 1-902382-63-3, Smith/Doorstop
You can leave me with it, this sinkful, the stumps of cauliflower, garlic skins, spud peel, the gungy matter a kitchen accumulates. This, at the end of the day, is how I like it. I gather pots, scrape away leavings, soapfroth dripping from my wrists. My thumbnail scratches at a hide of burnt sauce on the bottom of a non-stick pan. Dusk makes the window a mirror. I stare beyond myself into arteries of sycamore.
It’s your style to leave things to drain, mine to dry and put it all away, a fiddle tune in my head, high notes almost disappearing before they plunge to the bottom of everything, knives in the knife drawer, spoons snug in their tray, plates on their shelves, and always something misplaced, on purpose: scissors with the spice jars, the masher behind the milk-jug, deliberate faults woven into the day’s back end, a guarantee it’s been the genuine thing, while the musician signs off with an intricate flourish and outside the last bus climbs the brow, its lit shape trundling home with no one on board.
in collection Another Place, 2007 ISBN 978-1844713-97-4, Salt Publishing
I’d say he was at sea. If only, my mother said, giving me the sort of look grown-ups give grown-ups.
I’d say he worked on the rigs, the Gulf of Mexico. The kid two doors along confided his was in Bolivia.
I’d say nothing of the monthly trips, gates and doors, the hubbub of a long room, formica table-tops, plastic cups.
For a man who claimed he hadn’t meant to, he smiled a lot, more often and wider as the years went by.
For a man who didn’t know when, he kept up with the news, read between the lines, worked out his answers.
For a man lost to the innocence of words, he left it to his smile to see him through - goodbye’s, christmases, divorce.
For a man who finally got out, what he likes best now is staying in. From his seventh floor flat the town’s unchanged.
He keeps a tally of my visits; we share a takeaway, a game of chess I always lose, the comfort of long silences,
though when I ring the bell and listen as he slides the bolt, rattles the chain, there’s a familiar urge to run
before the front door opens and we’re both giving it that kite-wide, wouldn’t-harm-a-fly, killer of a smile.
published in Seam |
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