The Light Dancing
When I close the door
my father’s coat slow dances
against the dark wood.
It is old, this coat,
marked by many winters,
labours of a lifetime done.
I imagine him in the front yard
screening sand for the new extension,
coat collar upturned against the breeze,
a cigarette ashing towards his lip.
There’s a light in his eyes
when I stop during play
to prattle and hear him say
“you’re the best woman in the house.”
Now coming from the Big Field,
the day’s farming done,
his great hands in deep pockets.
Dark shoulders that bear a darkness coming,
the last of the light
dancing on his wet boots.
Bird’s Eye View
Weekends had you waiting
at the top of the hill,
standing bird-sized in the distance
while we strained against the windscreen
for the homespun blue or brown pullover,
the hand lifted in greeting.
A conversation already started
in the smile reaching out to us.
Any news in Dublin? you’d say.
And we’d laugh at the old joke,
knowing the familiar
is the only news worth having.
When the word came,
sudden and unfamiliar,
and we stood in the shock
of that July morning,
another image of you reached out;
that last afternoon in Dublin.
Your car driving away,
and at the end of the road,
you, turning to look back,
as though you knew.
As though
you had a bird’s eye view of it all.
The Meadow
When he pitched the hay,
the fork sent two ribs of light
into the air, until a small mound
sat waiting for my eager dance.
My job to press down the hay,
steady the rising tram.*
Balanced there, I was a Goliath
outgrowing my father’s reach.
Glimpsed now for the first time,
the top of his head
where a patch of hair had thinned
to show a small roadway of veins
I’d seen once in a new-born.
Surprise giddied me.
The tram rocked beneath my feet,
its perimeter sudden and unsteady.
*mound of hay
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(Photo: sj carey/flickr.com/ CC BY 2.0)
- Three Poems by Cathy Conlon - March 2, 2023