what the thunder says

what the thunder says

 

weary of wine and cheese

and washing sherry,

I quit my job and headed west

and further west

 

till settling in Dunquin,

on the coast of Kerry,

to live out my days

in Trappist obscurity

 

I have no Gaelic

I decline to speak English -

some say I’m a Latvian - on the run -

I’m inclined to let them

 

when thunder roars in from the Blaskets

the villagers cluster Kruger’s Bar,

get drunk on ‘black’ with Paddy chasers

fiddle jigs and sing soft songs

 

I barrow my wicker

chair to the strand

and sit cupping my ears

to catch the keening

of the ‘Sisters of Precipitation’

in their timeless celebration

 

the rain spins breathless yarns

of lands beyond Antarctica

the warm seas of Micronesia

babies drowned off Ithaca

 

stopping play at Ashes matches

soaking a watercolour painter 

drenching lovers on CarburrowTor

kissing the ground of a rubble slum

for a daisy to grow where nobody goes

 

trickling Betjeman’s nose,

caught by his tongue, tumbling his gullet

discreetly expelled via fumbled zipper -  

an amber stain on the wall

of British Rail, Slough

 

I love the raindrops’ carefree

dives headlong into see-saw water

how they swoon into the sea

to become the sea

 

when sunshine returns

I take my dripping wicker home

to my tumbledown cottage

on the edge of the village

 

a stocious neighbour,

stops, salutes me,

“Tá sé in aghaidh an lae mhór anois tá sé ag cur báistí stop” *

I nod – a nod’s enough

 

as my chair dries on the step

I listen hard for casual gossip

alas the drips are quietted

 

I wonder what slanders

the raindrops conjure

when my back is turned.

 

*turned out nice again