Glengariff Nocturne

The tea stews the sky into a river marine with steeped pink puffs,

Stripped and brushed like bushy splotches or shaggy overgrowth,

As Da’ rummages from scraping-yawning drawer to jingling-rattling drawer,

Searching feverishly for such an old man now for the last clean spoon,

Needed desperately to shield his stoney numbed digits from being scolded once more,

By the bobbing papery disc in his chipped and stained mug,

So important for the day that it is.

Da’ would go out in the sickly September morn’ and beat the sheep around the fields,

For no more cause than to keep me from his mind,

To keep the tears from feeding the stiff and starved dirt beneath his rubbery wellingtons,

On this twenty-nineth anniversary of the last time he allowed his eyes to fill and drown,

And forever remember from that day on,

To triple check the handbrake stands erect;

A dolmen to my memory.

#HI