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The Legal Studies Forum
Volume 30, Number 1/2 (2006) reprinted by permission Legal Studies Forum Lawyers & Poets Scenes || Dreams JOHN O'DONNELL ________________________ Rhythm Painting - for Tony O'Malley You heard it first, the lowing skies and roads still smudges on a palette. Something is moving under stone-crossed fields, among the scrawn and scraggle of the hedges; the breathing, pagan earth. The rain a robe over the hidden land. Easel angled to a dowsing stick, you divine this rite of mud and bog in shade and hue, hymn the crow-caw scoring the leaden air, scratches on a canvas. Elsewhere your brush hovers, landing in eleutherian light. Each day a blur of distant music; earthlyre wings, the hum of dreaming seas. Listening, you put on morning in an impasto of turquoise, reds and blues, watch moths gather over harvests standing stacked against the evening; stooks of yellows, ochres, browns. In the village they are wearing masks and flowers, voices lilting into night. Ancient cadences, rituals resonant in your rhythms of paint; island songs, the occult earth-drummed rain. [669]
The Toolbox Buried beneath jumble in the attic a dim gleam: my grandfather's toolbox. Through dust I trace the legend in a nameplate on the lid I hardly dare to open afraid of what is, or is not, inside. Small compartments stare back, empty, tidy silences that once held plugs and fuses. I imagine his hands busy with wires, screwdrivers making connections. "M.J. O'Donnell, Oldtown, Co. Limerick." The first electrician in the parish. That man lit up a whole town from wobbly ladders, or on his knees in houses smelling of candle-grease, a dangling shade and socket in each room. And always the professional, the teak case polished, easy by his side. I fumble in the dark to find him now within this box he'd carried with him his whole life that holds him still in dents, scratched surfaces the grain warm with his fingerprints light inferences of deft, enviable craft making lives glow. Outside the evening brightens to his memory in the street. I'll touch the wood to feel him touching me. [670]
Bills She-d hoovered the whole house before the end, every room left gleaming, spick and span. Polished taps and counters shone for stricken friends, neighbours who-d drop in after, to make tea. The funeral arrangements were written out in her small, still-tidy hand: "Amazing Grace. No flowers." She-d had the whole event so carefully planned, even to the final thing she did before she walked across the beach into the sea: the settling of accounts. Fifty each, the grocer and the butcher; a fiver in the library for those books long overdue. At the garden centre the young assistant beamed: "Well now, Mrs. Mac, I reckon this brings you right up to date" as he took the twenty, handing her the daffs. On the table her last words, an envelope propped up against the vase: "This is no-one's fault. I just can't go on. I've had enough. My bills are paid." [671]
Icarus Sees His Father Fly I've spent hours watching you Glide, soaring on updrafts Far above the wrinkled sea And you nearly seventy! Up there it-s all wind and lift, Wheeling in the brilliant blue Harnessed in that brittle frame Of leather, wood and gum. You swoop with a delighted screech And climb again, so high over the beach You seem closer to the sun Than me. But it's just one more game To you, aloft on your own genius Showing how it's done. I wonder did you ever doubt Your own ability, trundling out Off this cliff edge into the stun Of that cool rush of nothingness Beneath your feet? It's unlikely You stopped first to think of reasons Why you shouldn't also share the sky With startled birds, clouds that grumble by; All confidence, you said. I thought of gravity, some Shift in the weather; breezes out at sea Turning into sudden storms instead. But you're drunk on air now, insistent That I follow into azure by your side. Making a man of me, or you? So much I've tried To make you proud. Shouts of encouragement Loud in my head. Your voice once more. My arms spread. [672]
Sea Language I was seven when you first taught me The language. Halyards. The mast. Mainsheet. Boom. You'd hoist Those words above us, proudly, As if you'd make them Specially for me. Our house Was a ship full of sails and shouts, The rattle of rigging, and you at the helm, A voice that was always there Even after gales and waves had died. I can still hear you inside A harbour bar, ashore somewhere, Talking up a storm while I Shivered and drank Cokes until I almost burst. Now, beerbellied, I can taste The salt you left, and keep a weather eye The way old sailors do. Our lives together have been distances, Arguments over routes, directions, Which way the wind really blew; The usual son and father stuff. These days I prefer squalls to the silences In the wary talk of sea between us, Afraid of when our craft won-t be enough. [673]
John O' Donnell, a Senior Counsel in the practice of law in Ireland, was born in Ireland in 1960. His poetry has been published in newspapers, journals and anthologies in Ireland, England, Australia, and the United States. He has given readings in Ireland and England, and has broadcast on national and local radio. Some Other Country (Bradshaw Books, 2002) was his first published collection of poetry. A later collection, Icarus Sees His Father Fly, was published by Dedalus Press in 2004. O'Donnell is a member of the Board of Poetry Ireland. The poems here are drawn from John O'Donnell, Icarus Sees His Father Fly (The Daedalus Press, 2004). |
