My first Irish publication!
Last week I sent a new poem to The Mayo News,
and it appeared in this week's edition.
It can only be viewed online in their digital edition,
which is a pay-per-view operation. So instead,
I've photographed the page of the newpaper:




Unfortunately, because of the layout,
the linebreaks were slaughtered.
Here is the correct version:

Golden Hour

I found a new way up a steep slope,
a rusty gate that opens easily
with a simple untangle of rope.
A quick clamber from sea level
to the thistled ridge, ankle-deep
in grasses whose names I wished I knew.

And all along that ridge, from every direction—
gulls and swallows and starlings
in a shimmering swoop & dive—

I scuttled under barbs, amazed
at the efficiency of the crouch, the roll.
And no rips: not one.

And down I went on the other side,
nearly hip-high now in the meadow,
the rambling field of bracken, thickets of gorse.
I followed no path and left scant trail.

And happiness rippled up in me, plain and unadorned,
the kind of happiness for which there is no accounting.

Looped back to the gabled house
across the tide flats of Clew Bay,
slipping on sea kelp, on carrageen.

And no urgency to know who possesses
the barbed-wire I ducked beneath,
in whose unmown meadow I whistled.


--T. Clear

A few shots of people at the Crossmolina Vintage
Tractor Show (as always, click on a photo
for a larger view)....

Watching a border collie herd four ducks:




Watching a man repair a copper bucket:



Intrigued by tractor wheels:



This man had the most beautiful blue eyes. When I
asked him if I could take his photo, he became
suddenly very shy. We purchased some old postcards
and Christmas cards from him:



This photo just goes to show that one never knows
what will show up in a photo (ahem)....

For those of you to whom I've promised postcards
and are faithfully checking the mailbox daily,
despair not. I'm here for another month.
Each one takes about an hour, and it's been
slow going of late, what with a steady supply
of houseguests.

Robin and I set out along the curving cove
last night at about 9pm, in a faint drizzle.
The tide was far, far out, and we walked
on the floor of the ocean: carrageen moss
and periwinkles and hundreds of crabs
no bigger my thumbnail. Every footstep
was a squelch.





On the nearest island, kayaks lined the beach
like bright pennants in front of the lone cottage:
red, yellow, green.

No otters tonight, but once I watched one
shimmy up from the water, sleek and quick,
only to disappear as quickly into some tunneled hole.

Behind us, sweet honeysuckles stretched languorously
over the bank and seemed to go on forever
I gathered a fistful -- delicate and pale blossoms,
enough to fill the cream pitcher, enough
to scent our gabled house --

Who let the cows out?

Suddenly in the cove today, escaped cattle mooing
and grazing and wandering out on the tide flats.
Whose? We didn't know.
Three horses behind barbed wire
leaned against their fence: cow TV.



They drank rainwater collected in Pat's outboard boat
as if it was a trough hauled out in the mud just for them.



Calves suckled. Randy youthful cattle
mounted other randy youthful cattle.
Meena latched her gate: no desire
for a tromping herd in her potato patch.
We were mostly amused: city folk
and the novelty of cattle roaming on a beach;
a suddenly very mucky beach,
pie-ridden, so-to-speak.

And just as quickly they disappeared,
along with their mournful moos, out beyond
some curve in the landscape.

Westport Signage

I'm short on words. (Hard to believe, but true.)

Calm.

Tesco Spy Mission #2

See the brand name on this coffee? Do you see it?
And here in the west of Ireland, for god's sake.
Back in a previous life I used to do catering
for Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz's private plane.
There were teenaged boys who always requested
my strawberry white-chocolate scones.
(Which tasted like strawberry shortcake.)
The order was always picked up by his flight attendant
(can't remember her name only her height: tall,
and her hair color: blond.) One early morning,
before we opened, she stopped by for some sandwich
platters she had ordered. It was the middle of winter,
dead-dark, on gritty Airport Way in Seattle.
She looked at the platters, frowned, and asked,
"Do you have any little edible flowers
to scatter across this?"
Well. Um. No.
Not for this price, honey.
I mean, what did she expect me to say?
"Let me run up to my rooftop greenhouse
and see what's in bloom"?
She was fussy like that, always picking at something.
She expected a lot for a low price, and I don't know
why she thought we would be the ones to cut her
a deal. Anyway, it was a good gig, and she tipped.
And I kind of liked the idea of my scones
cruising in the high altitudes.

(Image by britishgrenadier.)

Update on R. is that everything looks good.
A bit of recovery, as a HA! (heart attack) is a shock
to the system both physically and psychologically.
He e'mailed me and said everyone is asking
if there's anything they can do, and what he would
really like is a cherry or blueberry pie. Hmm.
(No dietary restrictions except for caffeine and alcohol.)
I'd make him one but I don't think it would mail well.
His wit & sense of humor are back in full force, apparently!
(Hey, wait a minute, his brother knows how to make
a pie. Nelson? Are you reading this?)
I didn't raise no pie-fools.
(And yet, I am a fool for pie.)

For the first time in a week, the knot
in my stomach is beginning to unclench.
I'm going to sit outside on our bench
and let these Atlantic breezes sweep through me.

I've been washing the bedding, towels, etc.,
in anticipation of our next round of guests.
There is something incredibly grounding
in the folding of clean white sheets. It's
such a plain, ordinary act. This morning
I made beds, square corners every one.
I've heard them called "hospital corners"
but that's a bit clinical. And the towels
from yesterday are still flappin' on the line,
still wet. This is an experiment. I know they'll
dry eventually, but in which month, which year?

Carrowholly Pastels

I hung sheets and towels on the clothesline
this morning, as the weather looked promising.
And now they are more wet than when I clipped
them up....

Your Laundry!
Now even fresher with Clew Bay rain
from the brisk, salty waters of the Atlantic!

---

And now, Fun With Meat....

I really prefer my ox tongue to be tethered.
To a stake. In the yard.



I don't know what to say about this:



And I'm not sure just what this is....is it bear?
Baloney? Is it edible?!



Obviously, I've been skulking around the Tesco
with my camera like some kind of Nutrition Spy.
I get some odd looks. But who could resist
the urge to document these fine examples
of World Meat?!!

A call for, er, poetry....

From stonechat:

The name of this Elizabethan official, who spent
many years in Ireland, suggests treatment in a limerick:

An official called Lodowick Bryskett...

Can anyone finish this? A modest reward is offered.

Horse Heaven

Bob and I took a long meander down the beach
after a failed attempt to reach Crovinish Island.
It would've required the doffing of boots
and a wade through carrageen-thick water
up to the knees or so. I was game, but the boys
weenied out. So we ended up on a little cross-pasture
jaunt, over stone walls laced with barbed-wire,
through hillsides of thistles and over barred gates
(we entertained a small herd of heifers in the process).
We both managed not to rip any clothing!
Barbed-wire is an effective deterrant, I must say.
These equines greeted us at the bottom of the hill,
when we finally wound (and found) our way
back to the road.

Big Daddy --


Check out these feet --


This pretty boy, across the street, was jealous
of all the attention the other horses were getting,
so I crossed the road while he posed for me --


Mama and baby --


Practicing dance steps --

Reports are coming in of postcards that have
survived the long journey out of Carrowholly
into the greater world. I love that so many hands
have touched each one by the time it arrives
at its final destination! I finally brought out
the art-box again today and settled-in to some
contemplative pastel work.

And no news is good news.

From a blog that often sustains me,
The Dishwasher's Tears:

My troubles are but few and I am making
a space for them. My troubles are singular
and universal. I am learning humility
and that I do not control the world around me
no matter how hard I try or how much I want it.

What is can be no other way.

Brooding.

Well, the clouds, at least. Although a terrific storm
pummeled us last night, the storm that is My Life
has eased a bit.

We drove to Galway yesterday in merciless rain
and traipsed up and down High Street, into shops
(the usual shamrocked-tchotchkes) for a respite
from the continual waterfall. Too bad, because none
of the buskers were out, which the kids would've
enjoyed. And it was chilly. Alas.

Our guests depart early tomorrow, but I wish
they would stay the summer. The next group
rolls in Friday mid-day, and the craic resumes.

Daily phone calls to Seattle. Hoping I've made
the right decision to stay-on here. But the Shannon
airport is only a few hours away, and there's always
a flight heading west, if the need arises.
And it likely that the myocardial infarction
was the result of a rare side effect of a new medication
R. was taking. And although it's horrifying to have to
consider that this is the case, on the other hand
it's comforting to consider that an irregularity in his
own physiology was probably not the underlying cause.
He's come through all the tests and bloodwork
with flying colors. Now it's a matter of wrapping
one's mind around the notion of a heart attack
at 23. It's a notion fraught with doom and outright shock.
When we can process this, and when R. eases back
into a regular routine, then perhaps the 3am revving
train-engines of anxiety will fade to silence.
In the meantime, it's Better Living Through Chemistry.

Spent a lot of time on the phone tonight,
scratchy connections with doctors and nurses
and both sons. The reality of what has occurred
has suddenly hit R., and even though his prognosis
is excellent, he's terrified. Dispirited.

I keep saying these words to myself, to demystify them:
heart attack
heart attack
heart attack
heart attack.
Regularly, tha-thump.
Like a heart beat.
Until the words become real.
Until they are boring.
Until they are ordinary.

---

Some friends came by tonight for drinks
& hors d'oeuvres: talk of politics
and Irish cultural heritage and the width of roads
and flower species and horses and Stonehenge
and holy wells and Barack and the Magdalene Laundries
and the price of sheep's wool and an island called Crovinish
and poets and cairns.
Among other things.

They are lovely people (these friends), every last one of them.

And of course, always in the back of my mind:
Reilly. In the front of my mind. Everywhere.

Fraught.
Fragile.

Quietly stepping through the minutes today,
cell phone at the handy. Feeling pretty useless.
But still in Ireland. R. still in hospital.
Seattle still six thousand miles away.

----

A little tenor treat, I recorded this downtown
this afternoon:



Still the most beautiful place on earth:




I'm hoping for quietly beating hearts, steady hearts,
unbroken hearts.

Invocation from Achill Island

After hiking up the hill from the cell phone towers
to the statue of the Virgin perched at the peak
the phone rang (thank god for good reception; we couldn't
have been in a better location) and it was my son Nelson
telling me that his older brother Reilly was in the hospital
with chest pains. I tried not to panic, and told Nelson
to call me back immediately when he found out more.
About twenty minutes later, the phone rang again,
to discover that R. had suffered a heart attack. He's 23.
No more information except that he was being transferred
to the Cardiac Unit of the hospital.
Then I panicked.

I recall very little of the 45 minutes drive
back to the house. Paul kept trying to reassure me:
he's young, healthy, doesn't smoke.
No blood pressure issues. It didn't help much,
there on the back roads of County Mayo, 6,000 miles
from Seattle. I felt centuries away. Light years away.
A lifetime away. Inescapably remote.
Desolate.

The good news is that it appears to be minor, his heart muscle
looks good. I spoke with him on the phone, and he insisted
I not come home. He made me laugh.
He sounded like Reilly.

Paul said, "I feel like we should celebrate.
I know that sounds weird, but you know what I mean."

Yes. I did. What a very short time ago sounded
like dirge suddenly sounded like a jig. An Irish jig.
Keep it slow for a while, though.
I need some time to breathe.

Interiors

A house down the road for sale.
In the photos on the realtor's website,
it's a pretty sweet spot (the tide out the back door),
both inside and out. Now it looks like someone has
trashed the place and left in a hurry. Squatters?

---

We walked/climbed up the flanks of Croagh (Mt.) Patrick
yesterday. All but Bob and I wimped out at St. Pat's statue.
Here's the path:



We weren't attempting the summit, and were without
water, so we didn't even attempt the ridge, but pressed
on for about 30 minutes, the view more spectacular
with every labored step.



The boys:



Bit & sparks of sunlight!

I sent out my first batch of postcards in the mail
today -- the card-stock was a mite bit thin
so I'm anxious to see how they fare in the hands
(and automation) of Irish and American postal workers.
But then, that's all part of why I do this: launch
my oeuvres into the world unprotected, at the mercy
of the elements. See how they fare.
So let me know if they arrive mangled.
If you want one and haven't sent me
your snail-mail address yet, there's still time!
(carrowhollygirl@gmail.com)

---

My niece Jane and I are enjoying a Nutella moment.

---

rainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrain
all night
all day