Rainshower (for Brig)

First published in Ireland of the Welcomes, Jul/Aug 1993
The hush was broken only by the lowing of the cattle as mist rolled by the hedge-row gap and rushed the cobwebbed grasses in the lower pasture. Here in the sheltered corner the moist air caressed the cottage, hidden from the road and nestled in a hollow of the land. It stroked the slate roof, probing for gaps beneath the lichens as drops gathered nearby to plot an earthward course, starting, slowing, pausing to join and rejoin until a single trickle guttered to the barrel by the lime-washed gable-end. Sweet turf-smoke, pale in the soft light, followed the mist across the hollow -- swirling, twining, floating down and through the low-cut hedge, dissipating in the open in one brief gust.

A tiny rivulet began near the front door, fed by water on the windowpanes that leaked down onto the sill, then to the worn path beneath where the grey stones spattered and darkened. It wormed its way between, standing in small, rippled puddles where the surface dipped a little, then spilled onwards, downhill to the wrought-iron gate and rutted lane, where purple-flowered clover soaked it up.

The clouds descended, brimming with light and life. Broiling, twisting, tumbling through the lowering skies, they funnelled clockwise past the garden gate, stepped out across the rooftop and the lip of the hollow, then filtered through spreading branches of a lone sycamore, they dipped towards a young stream. Yellowed, greyed, marble-flecked, stones and shingles splashed and gurgled the stream along, unseen and secretive, into some other distance.

The earth it ran through breathed slow and deep, silently inhaling pure silken air. Laden with the gentle weight of atmosphere, the luscious grasses of the bank turned slowly downwards, bowing to the nourishing soil. Birds, nesting, crouched low and were quiet. The whitethorn's barbs were jewelled with glassy beads that fell from spike to spike in little sudden showers, shaken by the freshening breeze. A brisk breeze. A drying breeze.

Cloud flurries passed by the hedgerow-gap, breaking and separating, scudding low in the pasture. The trickling waters sputtered on into the barrel, then slowing, turned to scattered drops and ceased.

The slate roof dried. Light broadened as sky-shadows crossed the fields, greens, browns, and yellows flickering into view, then spreading out in steady concentration while clouds grew fewer and sunlight filled the day. Vapours vanished, shimmering skywards. Flowers in the laneway unfolded and spread. In the tree, a bird, ruffled, wet, hopped twice along a branch, cocked head to listen, chirped. In the hollow, an answering call, another, and the day was filled with song. Cows crossed the freshened stream to grazing. Doors opened, voices carried, silence broken as the rain passed down the valley and away.

Snowfall

First published in Ireland of the Welcomes, Jan/Feb 1997.
Grey-brown clouds darkened the horizon, bringing with them a threatening wave of chill air. Highland sheep huddled behind walls; in deep, damp hollows; by lone thorns, ancestral genes warning them of imminent snow. In the valley, old men sniffed and looked skywards, cracked stubborn joints, muttered against age, and turning away went back to their fires. The air dried, and slightly warmed. A hush followed, then, silently, the first large flake fell, one here, two there, another elsewhere; on the top of a robin's favourite fence-post; on the crooked nose of last-year's scarecrow; onto the clamp of turf beside the gable; on the scarce remains of fruit in the orchard; on the cover of the holy well; in the ruts of the country lane; on stones in the brown-running stream; until sky and earth were sugar-frosted, blurred together into rice-papery, marshmallow, whipped-creamy white.

Still it fell, softly, gently, layer upon layer of wefting, weaving crystals, tiny fingers lacing together, strands forming, floating, falling to rest in anything that held them, arching delicately across miniature grass-blade gaps, plucking at spiderwebs in passing, downing the world as if it were a new-hatched nestling chick whose mother, Springtime, will soon return.

Beneath the trees, islands formed, snowflakes in the lee of old sycamore, rising up from bramble skirts. Whiteness spread around corners, under fences, under the bridge, as the calm, sedate shower began to stiffen into flurries. Flakes then stippled over roof-slates, tripped against walls, careered across the open fields. Crystals shaped and reshaped into new forms, powdery, speed driven, stinging snow.

The wind rose, moaning around the orchard and the valley cottages. Knife sharp and icy, it stabbed the fallow land and fields, sliced by the pond, banked back. It probed nooks and crannies, leaving behind it whiter calling cards that stacked up, neglected, like so much unwanted post, began to drift across the laneways, clambered up sides of telegraph poles, obscured roadway signs, cast sinister traps over drains, clad the quiet country in loneliness, desertion.

Night fell quickly, stars appearing as the snow clouds swirled away on other errands. The wool-like blanket hiding seeds and slumbering things alike began to freeze into many forms: ramps, plateaus, planes and angles; knives, scythes, and spear shapes; undulating sea-shore sands when tide turns; piped icing; crochet-knitted yarns and feathered fans. The moon rose, casting strange shadows over all, a weird fluorescent quality emerging beneath. Animals nosed from secret burrows to creep cautiously about thin crusts, leaving tell-tale signs of paw and claw. They crisscrossed fields, trails of four-legged creatures, rabbit, badger, fox, small ghosts in a ghostly whiteness, a landscape of fitful dreams.

When the sun rose, the tracks were joined by others, three-toed, hopping, crows and smaller birds, looking for food in the hard, hidden ground. Fires dampened for the night were fanned into life, breakfasts made, and children wrapped up snugly for the day. Soon the sounds of humankind filtered across the silent world of sunlit, shining snow, screams of delight or protest, snowballs, sleds and snowmen, boots crunching, kicking, sliding. Winter's stage was set once more, dressed and decorated, oblivious to we players, the world slowly turning to the endless beat of time.

Breeze

First published Ireland of the Welcomes, Jan/Feb, 1992.
It played in blue. Jetting free on wide wings it turned, spun, was active, was full. It soared: dancing; spinning in the skyscape. It slipped, skimming, rolled joyously. It dipped, rose again, spiralled, gliding upwards, peaked, stalled brightly, then sinking slowly backwards it hung easily on its own cushion of purest air.

Slowly now, fluid, musical, trickling downwards, alert for sudden updrafts that might cut it loose to flail helplessly away, it ranged among the lower airways, self-contained, watchful, and utterly alone...

Lower now, closer, a shimmering haze dusted horizons, masking, dulling blue and green. Shifting slick mirages flowed across the country road or stood in silver pools between the telegraph poles and stone walls of summer. White pebble in a crossroads; yellowed grasses by an iron pump; heat spread a thick blanket on the landscape. Flowers laden with pollen were worked by bees that hummed through purple meadows. Grasshoppers chirped and sang. The sky here was blue-grey, empty and huge.

There, the breeze -- curious child of the sun -- stirred slowly. It sank lower, more comfortably, lazily resting. Gently, deftly, the warm air rising tugged until it slipped gently sideways, hovering a little to gaze out over the green patchwork of fields, then plunged to earth. Heady vapours rose as it descended, fragrant bouquet of wildflowers, aromatic in the sunshine. The brisk smell of drying hay it carried with it from a yellow field, welcome as a home-coming and whispering like silk though land and woods.

Lower still, it brushed the greying margins of the roadway, swirling miniature dust-devils to dancing-dervish frenzy. It dropped, scurrying the length of the straight, dry ditch, waving leaves and branches wildly where it passed; kicking twigs and brambles before it in a drain-bed. Leaping out, it bounced across the road, capered by the pump, scuffed tufts of grass, skipped the low wall around, then dived recklessly over. Ripples scudded sideways in the brook beyond, scattering startled fishes under safer stones. Rambling the riverbank, it drank in the cool air that lingered near the water, puffed itself up, cast about, blew a tuneful, swaying blast through a crouching willow. It laughed as the tree tossed, shivered, clawed, creaked, murmured, stilled.

Pleased, it chased about the meadow, dodging flowers. It gambolled up the slope towards the crossroads, quartering the land. Then, from the hilltop, the lower world refreshed and cool beneath, it leapt suddenly upwards, joyously, wildly, carelessly, away. Skimming fresh cloudlets, it ranged among the airways of its true and only home -- that huge, blue silent dome of the big sky...

The Ivy on the Old Mill

Ireland of the Welcomes, Mar/Apr 1991
Wild ivy brushed the arched bridge by the village school, creeping blindly, silently, on woody limbs towards the field and thorny hedgerow, gliding onwards by the boundary fence, until it found a quiet, unfrequented place, and gathered itself to leap suddenly upwards to prowl the weathered stones of the ruined mill. It paced the dizzy heights in one, slow stretch, plunged carelessly through the veiled windows to pad the lower levels where fogs gathered in the hollow of the evening. It peered through wind-hewn crevices where mice nested and reddish spiders swarmed. It slunk through mossy banks to twine about old roots, or dipped its spreading leaves towards the stream where moonlight gathered on the water. It menaced the blackthorn and the hazel tree, then glibly shrugged along the footpath, questing and curious.

It was careless too of the worn banks, where a wooden wheel once creaked, where a miller sweated and coughed to the sound of toothed wheels and pulleys, counterweights, the crackle of the drying-kiln, and the rounded stone, turning on its axle. Instead, it hung languorously from a mouldering beam of the aged floors, dangling, tail-like, one branch of waxy leaves, nonchalantly swinging in the breeze, caressing the splintered wood with gnarly fingers, whispering a tune as ancient as the bones of the mountains, as unchanging as the works of men fleet by. It may have listened to the evensong, as the brook, unfettered, scoured the fallen masonry, lilting to the nightime chorus of frogs and hunting-beetles in the grasses. It may have sensed the stirring of the barn-owl, emerging from the cleft behind the sheltered window, peering forth into the gathering gloom, or heard the faint scratching of mice beneath the hazel tree. It may have simply lain there, prying, insouciantly, at old, mortared blocks, loosening a stone here, another coping there, adding to the small, night noises the low patter of trickling dust.

Oblivious to the ghosts of labours past, it grows there, ignoring the rusted gears and cracked stone of the long-dead miller. Redundant, forgotten, and disused, they lie enshrouded in gossamer, faithful servants of another age. Slowly, as the moon rides lower, they decay a little more in their crumbled mausoleum, while the ivy, resting, waiting, sighing in the freshening breeze, clings comfortably, snarling shoots around a ledge as the sun rises and a trout breaks the surface of the stream below. It drinks in pure water of the mountains, extending, in one, sure movement, feeling the sun and its heat, putting forth a tightening grip on the living stone and pulling upwards to the blessed blue of the morning sky.

Going Back

Ireland of the Welcomes, Jul/Aug, 1993
It was the same. There at the roadway a pair of granite gate-posts; the crumbling sides of the arched bridge; the stream beneath.

It was different though. The gate-posts lacked the granite caps of old, prised off to add a touch to some bungalow's modern splendour; the crumbling bridge sides had been pointed and plastered to keep out the rain and frost; the stone-filled stream seemed no longer a hundred feet below the road.

We looked up the lane -- that lane I tramped from school with a burgeoning load of school-books; where a tin bread-bin would sit in a nook with a warm loaf inside (the lane being too long and rough for deliverymen to traverse in comfort); where envelopes or milk bottles nestled in an old, bird-proof, electricity-meter box on a post -- and there was the iron gate into the field.

Somehow, the white, new Nissan car didn't seem the match of the ancient lane, so we got out and walked -- picking our steps; (As my mother used to remind me on the way to school in the morning -- 'Pick your steps, now' she'd say, and I'd always wonder, as children wonder, what the words meant); picking our steps across the rutted lane where a small rivulet now ran ('That wasn't there before'); up the lane where cattle grazed in the fenced-off field ('The old hedgerow has grown neglected'); and where two horses ('horses!') eyed us solemnly from afar.

It was fifteen years or more since leaving. Brig had never been there, but had listened to my tales of roaming the fields, playing in the river, all the childish things I'd done when it was still possible to be a child, and still okay to play.

There was the house, or what was left. The windows were gone, the roof removed, and all the slates taken. The garden, overgrown even in the past, was levelled. The sheds still stood, but likewise were roofless. Everything of childhood was swept up and tidyed, put into some cardboard box in a back-room and backwater of local history.

'The Walshes lived there.' Who could doubt it? I stood at the iron gate looking up towards the yard. There was the lone tree of old -- a Fairy Tree, we were told -- the cattle track they used to and from the river; the green sweep of the field rising towards the furthest hedgerows; the woods beyond. Nearer to hand and down the bank, the boulder Dad dug out of the farmyard and dumped in the river; the green, wet bog (not a real bog, but soft enough to get your boot stuck in if you weren't careful); the briars -- now long, straggling, and barren -- where thumbnail-sized blackberries had grown.

'Shall we go in?' Brig said, looking at the cattle in the field, meaning that we might climb over the gate and walk towards the buildings. I didn't think so.

There were ghosts in that house. Not the familiar ghosts that kept us company day in and out, knocking secret knocks on the front door; standing in the windows during the day; creeping up behind at night.

They were other ghosts, the ghosts of childhood things that were better left undisturbed unless, like the deep-remembered drop to the river from my schoolboy bridge, they would diminish in adulthood to insignificance.

Once I had known every bush and tree; every twist and turn; each stone and pebble. Now, everything was subtly different. I decided it was better to stand here, some hundred yards from the house ('Was it a mere hundred yards? It seemed such a long way before') and just look. It grew cold and we didn't stay long.

Things large in memory look too small up close. Some times and some places you can never go back . But you can still visit -- and remember...

By A Clear Brook

Ireland of the Welcomes, Jan/Feb, 1990.
If someone was to ask me what constituted happiness for me as a child, I would have to answer: the river! It flowed from the Dublin mountains through Forestry lands and cattle-fields as one of several tributaries of the river Dodder, itself a tributary of the Liffey. But where it wound through the lands we tenanted, it made a happy childhood kingdom for children in general, and for one boy in particular.

I suppose it was natural that I'd have an interest in the river, for water was so much of our everyday life. In our crumbling, ancient farmhouse, it seeped, sweat-like, through the plaster. In the great rainwater-tank, it dripped steadily from the handleless, iron tap. The fields were mired with it in places, and the drinking-water for the household was hauled each evening in twin galvanised buckets, from the village pump at the bottom of a long, damp lane.

But the stream itself was a wonderland of sights and smells and sounds. Fishes you could spy where the bed deepened into gravel or sand: facing upstream and staying in position with a lazy sideways movement of tail and fin. A tossed stone and splash! the trout exploded in a burst of speed to safety, under a nearby rock, or sometimes, in a rush, upstream.

Or, further along, the slimed and treacherous stones where the water murmured and trickled, ever onwards. Many the dam I built with those stones, as the holidays wore on and school was but a vague, half-felt discomfort in the distant future. Snails of sorts made homes between the stones, or left stony shells on the undersides of smooth, grey rock, long since rolled from the mountains above.

Around a bend, garlanded by lush hedgerows of autumn-heavy briars, the stream spread its banks in a sluggish pool where river-plants could hold their soapy roots in the muddy ground. Sometimes, on a foggy morning, my boots along the higher bank would startle a great heron from its solitary post. Huge as a pterodactyl of old it seemed to me in my childhood; its dagger-beak carelessly held forward on its lithe neck; its wide wings solemnly, slowly, carrying it downstream-away. Where it came from or made its ponderous nest I never knew, but often asked in vain.

And then, when it had gone beyond the reach of a curious, eight-year old boy, to await patiently a swimming trout or yellow-brown frog, I'd wade in my lovely stream to where a single, granite stone rested in the flow. A rounded, triangular wonder it was, as mysterious in its origins as any grey-backed heron. Smoothed by countless floods of the lively stream, its sparkling surface of mica and quartz held my interest each time I stepped upon it. A shallow drift of sand was gradually deepening around its base, joining it inexorably to the bank beyond. I thought it sad that this statue-like stone would someday stand high above the water-level, as if rejected by the stream itself. But so it was, and each year the sandy-mud grew thicker and the stone edged further, without moving, into the dry land.

Turning from the rock, I might follow the stream to where it swung suddenly onwards, deepening in its course to a brown-black mysterious (and deliciously dangerous!) section of bramble-choked gloom. I fancied I had seen an otter there once -- bouncing along the concrete-bolstered shelf where the Rockbrook road climbed its high hill above. Perhaps it was just childish fancy, or a simple rabbit, grown larger by the sudden fright of thrashing bushes and scattered earth, for I never after heard anyone mentioning such a creature in this river. But maybe I saw what I thought I saw, in the shadow-dappled evening by a stony stream.

At evening, as the water gurgled downstream, and the sun declined towards a far horizon, fogs would gather in the hollow of the river. The smell of the river-plants would catch in the throat; an acrid, wet smell, altogether reminiscent of drowned boys floating in still silent pools. Then the lure of the river would lose its charm, and I would hurry along the furlong to the house, fearful of the bogeyman, or worse, in the misty twilight.

But ever the river called me back to its side, even in wintertime. For winter was the time it roared along the path it chose for itself, carrying debris from the high mountains and scouring the banks with brown, murky water. I never understood how the fish and other creatures weren't all washed away, as stones cracked off one another, and tumbled many yards downstream from summertime spots. The fury of the river was awesome, as the calm of summer-life was awe-inspiring.

But it was in summer that I collected my memories of my river, and in summer that I still seek a gentle brook to walk along and listen to in the calm of the morning. For to me, beauty exists in the simple things, and water and rivers are beautiful as they flow on quietly in the special memory of a small boy on a sunny, summer morning.

Colours of Childhood

Ireland of the Welcomes, Jan-Feb 2002.
My first encounters in the great outdoors, a tiny figure moving about in waist high, lucious grass, the smell of the nearby farmyard, the huge, silent sky, deep blue, grazed by slow, white herds of faceless sheep, shepherded by a perfect sun.

Here I stood, the universe before me. Red or orange ladybirds, their backs polka spotted, crawled everywhere, so common they could be caught and let walk across one’s hand any summer’s day. How long would they stay? Until, wonder unfurling, their tiny wings came out from beneath their spotted jackets and took to imperfect, wandering flight. Bees that came and went in quiet concentration. Large black and yellow striped ones, their legs orange with pollen; their smaller cousins of the hive, always working, ceaselessly, filling the fields with gentle music. Their larder work-place, the countless white-petalled daisies to the edges of sight, the purple or green flowered clovers, the yellow ranks of dogweed, the tall thistles.

Fence posts, grey, solid, between them kept the cows from entering the garden. They stood gazing through with curiosity at this small creature, its blond baby hair lying like a question unspoken, its hands reaching for noisy, nosy muzzles and wet, grassy snouts. Their hides of many colours, tan brown, black with white patterns, their tails, alive, flicking flies. Eyes, brown and lidded, stared through the divide. The world of the outside; the one of within.

Brilliant colours filled my childhood world. Not the colours of a modern playroom, but the hues that nature bestowed around us and of which, then as now, I could never grow weary. For some, memory is a fading book, something tinged and edged with sadness. My recollections are long still and wide, from low among the grasses to the dizzy heights of eagles. Filled with the wonder I am blessed and count my blessings.