A hole in the head

We were seen and not heard after your log broad thighs

strode over our nuisance of young ones in the hall,

clearing a path from the boot worn stairs through

tricycles, lego, toy soldiers, cabbage patch dolls,

waving an order to the quivering dew-nosed mongrel

to “Get Down Trixie” off the fire side of your one-piece suite.

Mothers gathered at the press, round the table, you cupped

your hands, gathered in the heat.

A horse of a man in your prime, you sat chomping great jowls

of bacon from the bone, swallowing glugs of Green Label.

Fed, you sat eyeing the canines of flames that leapt

through the scorched grate on the range you used as a

table. “Shush” for the Angelus, making the sign of the

cross, a “be quiet” for the six o clock news, a “put away

that friggin ball”. Then upstairs. New shapes flickered to

replace your looming figure on the wall.

Navvy—your shanks swung down sledge hammers on tracks

from Manchester to Derby Town to Birmingham to

Merseyside. Living on site, playing twenty one, five hundred,

draughts, making craic for a couple of hours at night.

What was earned you sent it home except for Sean Nos in the

Shamrock, a couple of pints, a weekly five minutes of fame.

Nana scolded with the promise of the back of your hand

once Christmas came.

But you lugged bags of laughter back to Mitchel’s, where

six or twelve months taller, the children rolled and

scrambled at your call,

and the little ones you loved but never knew would gaze in

guileless wonder at the shadow-shapes you projected on the wall.

Then postman at the door — dreaded telegraph panic-

staccato lines in black ink that usually ended with ‘dead’.

A hammer-spark of iron had blasted out your right eye

and left a great hole in your head.

Sick-mans grey pittance of years under ceaseless Kerry

rain. Children gone to Boston, London, read and re-read

postcards piled to stacks,

And anything you could atall to fill the brain, walking the

mongrels, television, oul chat, a thousand torn and dusted

paperbacks.

Or spooked the visiting kids with a glass of teeth, rolled

out the mould on your tongue, called us up the stairs for a surprise,

and there with belly-burst of laughter you would open out

a suitcase full of eyes.