Roots

Published Carty's Poetry Journal Christmas 2011

I

I come bearing sheets of forked ideas

and web-linked names of strangers

from whose loins I'd sprung.

I come as a city dweller,

to find in what small and mean house, or field,

my predecessors had struggled, unaware as yet

that more could be known than the next harvest,

the next child.

At first I found three modern houses,

complete with double garages, new cars,

and trampolines.

Each fresh house, with an apron of closely manicured, 

useless grass, whose clippings, heaped to rot,

led me up the lane way. to where the ditch was still agrowing,

and the years were taken back to when the moss

covered stones, were still naked in their busyness,

and when a bend was first turned,

for God knows what reason.

It is to this bend I go, this willful, or unconscious

hieroglyph, where one man stopped

and made our family’s home.

II

I find the first, weathered and decaying house,

single storied, single roomed, one eyed 

and open mouthed, silent in its memories

of house proud ornament, busy courtesan hens,

and other 'yard to pots.' 

At the second house, a horse waited, half door, open.

I was recognised as one of those who braided straw

to bend its will, and so, it tipped its head and snorted.

We gazed; exchanging memories, and

I saw in his stead, Maureen, and Delia, mother

and farmer’s daughter, glad for the break in weather,

that allowed the half door to stand open,

and the sun break in;

names I know from a census night, that were impressed

by pen, clumsy in  thickened hand,  listing proudly

read and write; English for the future,

English and Irish, for the past.

Three cottages in all, with no door facing another

so each man, father and son, could leave in the morning

and go his own way.

From here, at the age of fifteen, my great-grandfather,

had left, and crossed the fields to another farm,  picked

by the same calculation and observation, he learned

at the side of a towering leg, that was never uncovered, 

never revealed, as flesh.

Even in death, those trunks had remained so,

covered by a shroud that strangely stretched

from chin to toe, and those great hands

that had spread seed were now knuckled, and bound

restrained by prayer, and rosary bead.

III

In the graveyard of Kilcolman, where he lies now,

within a worms length of farmers who once eyed his land,

with intent; between the lichen and the moss,

I searched  in vain,  for a carved name,

that would tell me, I too lay here in part.

The western wind, that is without beginning 

or end, fills all the empty spaces between them

and me, and around these stone placements

I stagger, not knowing where, and when,

I am to fall.

Then from the derelict church, of rounded stone and sky,

a shivering  dog fox bolted from where the hunters lie,

and I was shocked to see, as if it was always there,

a landscape shared with toil and care,

and rough hewn cart, followed by skipping waif,

and a tired, stooped man, with chin on forearm, 

on upright spade, gazed wistfully in my direction,
and saw his future, before him laid.

©Copyright Niall OConnor  Images and Text