PATRICK DEELY

Childhood      

Old men solemnly shook their heads

and said be careful or you’ll fall off the edge

of the world.  I tried to get close

to the edge, wanted to leap

as I would from a tree, to spin and orbit

as the millions of dead people’s souls did –

shining in the dark, winking,

humming the song of eternity

even if nobody but me could hear them

or take from their trembling

that there was good reason to tamp down

the importance of things, for all

would pass and neither would your sadness

stay solid – but fade, shrink

softly away beyond the dawning curtains.

Go, droned the big wind in the chimney;

flow, whispered the wild grass

and spilling rivulets, but I mistook directions,

laughed in the wrong places,

fought and cut myself and tried to cry.

Pictures bloomed in my head. 

The straight thinkers seated at kitchen tables

or leaning on farmyard gates

certified a boy so bird-brained

he was bound to fly in foolish circles. 

Slowly, it brought me to gentleness,

I grew surefooted around whirlpool and quag,

drew from the shy ghosts

of the wet meadow my own story. 

And there was the world – there, the sky.

My Father’s Salsa

He would jiggle the riddle’s circular frame

between his hands, sand dancing

within, fine grains streaming

through the wire grid until only shingle

and jags of stone remained.  Then stop

those salsa rhythms I found

myself dancing to; chuck loose pebbles aside,

gouge from the quarry a refill,

shake and shuffle as before,

sifting so the damp, silken sand overspilled

the sides of its conical hill. 

Walls were called for where clay ditches

had always done, the quickening –

though neither of us knew it yet –

to modernity begun, cement mixer and silo

soon shunted into position. 

We saw it as improvement, tunnels drilled

through hills, tar lorries,

steamrollers smarming a nexus of routes. 

And bridges, so many new bridges

to cross.  Decades later, in this underpass,

a muffled whoosh, plastic

scrunched underfoot, long mittens of ivy

darned on rock.  I scamper up

and around, stand above everything. 

Smell fuel-burn, feel the wind against my face

no matter which way I turn. 

Traffic bugles, trombones, an out-of-tune

brass band, the world of strangers

here and gone, all my townlands swept past

in about the time it takes

to mime my father’s salsa, dream the man.

Patrick Deeley is a poet, memoirist and children’s writer from Loughrea, in the west of Ireland.  His latest collection of poems is Keepsake, published by Dedalus Press in 2024. www.patrickdeeley.net

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