Sonraigh

Homesick and missing Frank who's still "home" and wanting to be picinicing on a bluff in Ballyconnell after a Gale again.  Instead I'm bombarded by purring mowers, low flying airplanes, 18 wheelers shifting up hill,  blaring school bells. No rain nor any rain predicted. Parks & Recreation sprayed weed killer along our Arbor Vitae soundbreak.  They shrivel with the din, the  drought, the  blight.   It's not as bad as Houston in the final scene from "Local Hero"; but, it is my personal Houston and I want so much to be back in Springfield/Cregg where I  can not hear the traffic on the Donnegal Road--instead, lowing cows and sheep, swift Martins twitter and swoop.  

 I seek a remedy. 

Asclepias of Thessaly, one of the great minds of ancient medicine says:  "First the word.  Then the plant. Lastly the knife."  

So far, a good poet and a hot cup of tea have spared me, "lastly".   Today, I am spared by the words of Dermot Healy.

Away with the Birds

Just before a long journey

I get so homesick

that I can hardly talk,

or think, or eat,

 

All those half-heard notes

of transcience

gather, the sough

and regret,

 

till this, I think with a start,

may be forever.

I'm so glued to this place

I get light in the head

 

At the thought of being elsewhere.

This time Hartnett

won't be behind me

on the plane

 

to spray water on.

the lungs will be gripped

by the ribs like claws.

A gin or two in the air

 

won't make up for the small habits

of every day.  I'm finished.

Life will go awry.

And then there's the faces

 

Of people saying goodbye.

Do they see the fate

ordained for you?

The air-conditioners

going up into a whine

in some hotel where

last night's lovers are still at it

salaciously in your bed.

 

In a panic I launch

into something that will never

get finished, begin something

better left unsaid.

 

In the other room

you're putting away

trousers, shirts,

blouses, lipstick

 

while in here

I'm pretending to work

the words when, in fact,

I'm away with the birds,

 

Already sitting

out on the runway

at Kuala Lumpur

with a crossword

 

I began in Strandhill

and now half-way

round the world

I'm getting nowhere

 

wondering why I'm there

while I could be here,

and wondering why,

While I'm here,

I'm there already

by the southern ocean

beginning another round

of superstitions

 

to keep me going

and fill the distances between

the place I'm in

and the place I'm not,

 

not like in the old days

when I couldn't wait

to enter

the vast strangeness--

 

before first light

already on the road,

the thumb up,

the world before me.

from The Reed Bed