Inishmaan Walk Late June
Cross the plank to Inishmaan;
crowd tugs right, I shift left
to the clockwise route of ragged
pagans and upright pilgrims,
follow a notice to trá and airfield,
verges green and dewed, pointed
strokes of yellow, white, purple;
to the east Clare's karst sparkles.
Clouds drop, I reach into my pack
for my fleece. I do not pray
or petition as I walk, I stream
from tarmac to slate while turning
another left, the beach hidden
behind a cliff of marram, sand
and buckthorn. For days,
my head had been unsettled,
I shook at lunch, contorted left
and right at night, book dropping
to the laminate floor. I jumped
at any object dropped next door.
The ferry docks from Rossaveal,
**
The Cold Upper Midwest of the Heart
A cold stretch runs along the redbrick path
behind my house. I gauge it from the kitchen;
it's a narrow sliver of treachery; it links\
my back gate to the street where melted snow
gathers into ice at night; it lingers weeks
after light has dried out all other corners
of this property. Miss it and you go down,
break an ankle, collarbone, or even worse.
Beware of paths shaded by dismal evergreens.
High and low, I have spent decades seeking
the many cold places that churn inside me.
Finding one, I erase it like the nurse
burned warts from fingers in the school's
dispensary. It will sting, she said; she then
squeezed liquid through a dropper onto skin.
Her name was Mrs. Fowler, Billy's neighbor.
I am aware of what was never revealed to me.
Admiring my wart less finger, I did not harp
a moment on the sting of liquid nitrogen
on skin. Let's make another go of it;
I'll retrieve a garden broom and pick; I'll lift
and strike, sweep cracked ice quick out
onto the grassy verge; I'll fill a paper bag
with melt to lash onto the cold territory
under the loopy evergreens; we will warm
to the task together, thawing as we beat that
cold stretch that runs along the redbrick path.
**
Pandemic Petition to Pope Francis
- For Bob Churchill
Dear Holy Father, please find me a window seat among the lunchtime diners at the Main St. Café in Council Bluffs; I'll order a BLT—my default sandwich on the road. I like to drink my coffee black; in the mood, I'll add a slice of apple pie served a-la-mode.
From the front page of the NYT today I snipped a photo of a man dining there. No narrative required to enclose the frame; a picture's worth 1000 words though poets will disagree. The customer cropped is of my age I surmised; he had the café to himself as far as I could tell. A snippet of prose might have cleared this matter up.
It was months ago in the Rocheport General Store that I last perched on the road, my hands circling a coffee mug, a traveler in waiting for a lunchtime BLT. The store was busy with cyclists fresh from the Katy Trail, the service slow but pleasant in the rustic manner of Missouri. One man worked the place alone, a cook without a server, Holy Father.
The bread was lightly toasted, the mayo nicely moistened the long warm strips of bacon, sliced tomatoes running for the edges of my plate. My partner for the day, a lady raised on East Coast sophistication and wary of Midwest homeliness, pronounced her BLT to be "Satisfactory, I guess." First, to tighten tummy tension some, I nibbled at the Lays potato chips and spooned my side of coleslaw drowning in its bowl. Then, I raised my sandwich with both hands in the manner of a pontiff on an altar, if you can forgive the analogy, Holy Father.
It was a Sunday in mid-February at the outset of a trip to Denver, a day of drifting snow blowing across the interstate. But my spirits were light, the worst of the bad weather already passing to the East. Once I cross over the Missouri River into St. Charles, I am chill enough to embrace the adventure of the road. My mood has lightened. I hear the music clearer. I live in St. Louis though it is not the city that I am a native of: this might be of some interest to you, Pope Francis!
A few items of background history to relate. Council Bluffs is a political junkie's paradise, all the candidates showing up in town during the Iowa primaries to debate. Far more interesting than politics is the Union Pacific Museum downtown: it illustrates the history of the Transcontinental Railroad. 41.2619° N, 95.8608° W are the GPS coordinates of Council Bluffs, the county seat of Pottawattamie County.
-
Dear Pope Francis, I want to be that man dining at the Main St. Café in Council Bluffs. By day, I am a literary scholar; overwhelmingly, readers consider food and dining writing to be higher callings. Three generations of my family have operated restaurants. My father was a journalist; I try to channel his clear and succinct voice. These days, I am stuck at home by pandemic regulations.
Driving north on I-29 from St. Joe, I count the miles declining toward Council Bluffs. It was in St. Joe, Pope Francis, that Jessie James was shot to death by Robert Ford. Were Westerns popular in Argentina while you were growing up? Hitting Glenwood, I feel I am almost home for I have best friends in Council Bluffs I have often visited. Their old home is loving, wise and dreamy, on a hilltop in Iowa called a bluff, along a road winding eastward from the river, the bluestem drifting like a tune. Here is where the first people came to count the hours in talk. We have time, the Pottawattamie said.
Dear Holy Father, I pray for these Iowa friends though, in the words of my dead father, I am little better than an a la carte Catholic. Do they serve you BLTs at the Vatican or at your summer residence, Castel Gandolfo, Alba Longa? We both live on opposite sides of the Atlantic and opposite from the nations of our birth. Are you lonely in the Vatican? My mother has a magnetic ornament of you affixed to her new refrigerator. She's a fan!
My own house amongst the trees is warm, comfortable, and largely clutter free, save for my wife's heirlooms and antiques. These days, I work remotely tethered to the world by broadband from the basement. It can be hard to face the morning; my mind has closed, and my body strains to descend for breakfast, to savor another day of old folks hooked on ventilators, pictured texting last thoughts home. My breath and voice drop like sand to the bottom of an hourglass. There is food to savor though few to share it with. Holy Father, I am low today.
Let's meet for lunch, Pope Francis, at the Main St. Café in Council Bluffs. You can take an UBER there from Eppley Airfield in Omaha. I'll be seated and waving to you from a corner booth. Can you make this good thing happen for me? All I ask for is a minor pandemic miracle.
**
Wish You Were Here
I sat
in a rough compartment
of a night train
shunted southwest
from Venice, door
draft shaking, open
windows rattling,
smokes tipped hand
to hand, high summer
when a man began
to strum chords,
slowly, measured
confident and blue.
He was a soldier
resisting loneliness
and fear, his fellows
joined the impromptu
Pink Floyd serenade
the night drifted on
by the odd house light
igniting for moments
my flayed imagination
the drift of Jessica shifting
her head lain
across my thighs, hair
dark as coal. flopped
along my sunburnt legs.
The Soldiers' Song,
I whispered. Sleeping,
drifted far away from me.
**
Fr. Kevin Walking
The monk stepped
across a tiled surface
floor matching
his heavy habit,
black and white
Cistercian.
I mistook his silence
for impassivity
I did not know humility
that silence is practice
that movement admits promise.
At each station
along the narrow corridor
he flipped a switch
light flooding cavities
about his feet
illuminating a thread of tulips
along the chapel pathway
his stride hollow but certain.
Follow?
Only if you like, his weave
intimated.
-------------------
Eamonn Wall is a native of Co. Wexford, Ireland, who has lived in the US since 1982: in Wisconsin, New York City, Nebraska, and for the past twenty years in St. Louis. His books of poetry and prose include My Aunts at Twilight Poker (2023) Junction City: New and Selected Poems 1990-2015 ; From the Sin-e Café to the Black Hills: Notes on the New Irish (University of Wisconsin Press. 2000); Writing the Irish West: Ecologies and Traditions (Notre Dame, 2011). Poems, essays, reviews have been published in The Irish Times, The Washington Post, Prairie Schooner, Reading Ireland and other publications. He works as a professor of Global Studies and English at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Eamonn Wall is currently touring Australia. www.eamonnwall.net
No comments:
Post a Comment