Framed

Trying to organise my sheaves of scribbles into some sort of order, I came across some early poems which hopefully I haven't subjected you to before.
"My twenties" was a dark decade.....
And this poem was a response to a photograph of me as a disgruntled  20 something.

Framed

You sit at a picnic bench
in summer at Annamoe
Light not touching you
You smoke
but do not inhale
You are peeved
and you show it

Denim clad dungarees and check- work-shirt
Who are you trying to please?
Him, behind the lens
who sees you peeved
and revels in it?
Him, for whom you loosened and loosened until
you gave way?

No Blood, he said
No sheet red-stained to hang
in a marble-floored hall.
And you did not know why
Or what answer might hold

And so, you gave none.

Copyright with Cathy Leonard 2017

On the Brink

I am currently trying to recall my cupla focal of Gaelic, so when I read Manchan Magan's article in The Irish Times, Can you bring a language back from the dead?
I was moved to write something.
https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/heritage/can-you-bring-a-language-back-from-the-dead-1.3159014



They are on the brink
Mandaic, Champorro, Kashubian, Bukhari
Half of the world's languages
Stranded in a rock pool
Tongues culled
for the sake of:
Imperialism
Colonialism
Market Expansion
Monocultures

UNLESS

They are rescued by some language activist
Some Jessie Little Doe Baird
who revived Wampanoag from documents that survived its extinction
giving it an after life.

"It's a matter of justice," he says
This global salvaging:
of Diversity
of Folklore
of History
of Memory

Copyright with Cathy Leonard 2017

Meet the villain of the piece. Final part!... Promise....

MEET GUSSY GULL

As Gussy soared over Merrion Strand he almost dropped the wriggling duckling into the malodorous sea weed that lay strewn up on the beach. The stench was offensive, even to a gull with a high tolerance of stench. And to think that he and his clan were being heaped with the blame for this polluted eyesore!

 Gulls have lost the run of themselves, ran a recent newspaper headline. And when the twitterers got going the cry and hue for revenge reached fever pitch!

He and his fellow creatures were accused of pollution, of dispossessing children of their lollipops, of dispossessing adults of their sleep, bringing about sleep depravation in the whole of Dublin 4.  And then, if they were not pariah enough, there was a Special on the Late Late where Ryan Tubridy entertained that little precocious upstart Sally Holmes to a VIP slot! Her and her stats!

Gull droppings were 10 times more concentrated than human waste, making 40 million Ecoli per gull, she quipped, and then added a dozen other erroneous facts in condemnation of the whole gull species.

Ryan tried weakly to protest, quoting from Jonathon Livingston Seagull. But it’s penguins that are the whole rage these days and the little arrogant meddler, wearing a replica of her granda’s deerstalker cap and frock coat, just talked him down.

The stats were rigged; FAKE NEWS!!! He’d have to take it up with the Department of Truth. And meanwhile Sally Holmes’ online campaign, a veritable gull hunt, had to be stopped.

That was why he and his comrades had taken to the roof of Hawkins House, headquarters of the Department of Health.

Not to nest--- but to protest!!

Free speech for Gulls!

Equality for the avian species!

Justice for migrant birds!

And what happened then?

The wheels of government began to turn distinctly against them. There were calls for walls, nets, pest control measures. Calls for culling. Extermination of their race! Eradication. Genocide.

That’s when Gussy hit upon a plan.

Much as he’d like to discredit the penguin community, it was a long way to Dublin Zoo. And if the wind was westerly and gale force, he’d never make it. Seals were the nearest cousin to penguins that he could think of, and a colony of them was easily located within easy flying distance of Herbert Park.

His plan was to drop a duckling within bait stroke of a seal and then dive to the rescue. That should make the Six O’clock news. Sharon or Dobbo might even put in a personal appearance at the Forty Foot to interview witnesses. Seals would become the new scapegoats; gulls would be off the hook.

The problem was stealing a duckling first without attracting attention! And Sally Holmes had made gull-meat of that!

FINALE---THE SIX O’CLOCK NEWS

And now from our reporter in Dunlaoghaire

Sharon, can you give us the latest on this development at the Forty Foot?

Yes, Brian, it seems that Ma Doyle was sea bathing with her black flat coated retriever Molly when a duckling fell out of the sky within a snout’s distance of Molly’s bopping black head. Molly, being a retriever, went straight to the rescue but was intercepted by a gull that tried to wrestle the duckling from its rescuer. The dog was viciously attacked, but managed to hold on to the baby duck. The attempted abduction is the latest in a series of crimes committed by marauding gulls and has prompted the Minister for the Environment to call on The Taoiseach to call on the government to reconvene at the earliest opportunity to discuss the matter.

I believe that Sally Holmes was on the scene within minutes and is currently in pursuit of the offender?

Yes, Brian, Sally and Dr Whatsit in their drone balloon are now pursuing the suspect. I believe they are currently heading in the direction of the equator.

Thanks Sharon. We’ll have footage of the event and news on any further developments on the 9 O’clock news. The latest bulletin is that Molly, a setter-cross in fact, is to be awarded freedom of Dunlaoghaire. She is currently in St Michael’s A& E receiving treatment for her wounds which are not life threatening.

If anyone has found this report disturbing we would ask you to get in touch with the help-line 180020202020.

That’s all for now. Have a good evening and remember you can keep up to date with  the news on RTE News Now and RTE news app. 

Copyright 2017 Cathy Leonard All rights reserved

Dirge for a Lost cat

I wrote this when I was suffering the loss of kitty. Thankfully, as posted last week, he has been returned. 
But writing out the fears and apprehensions has always helped me to deal with challenging stuff.


Maybe


He thought he had two eyes
as he sat in the window-sill
on long summer evenings
longing to get out.

Maybe to scale those walls,
leap fences, chase prey,
dodge foxes,
do what cats do at night.

And since they'd gone there was no
creak of porch door, tail strokes, hourly treats,
No "Aren't you the clever little man!"
when he returned from his neighbourhood watch patrol.

Now there was just, maybe, a twice daily feed.
No chat, no strokes,
and no outdoors, ever.
He'd have to take the first glitch of an opening and scram...

He didn't know it was just
a four day trip to the seaside.
He thought it was forever;
That they would never come back.

He didn't know there was a fox
waiting for him.
Or maybe it wasn't a fox.
Maybe it was a car tyre.

Or, hopefully, maybe,
a little old lay with a tin of tuna.
We'll never know, ever, maybe....

He thought he had two eyes.

Copyright with Cathy Leonard 2017

Writing Competitions again....

This is a feel-good, predictable little piece of flash written for a competition. Whiskey of a particular brand had to come into it!



HORSE POWER  

Rory googled jobsearch again. He had finished his course in marketing eight weeks ago, and so far no luck. Some of his pals were already planning to join a friend in Canada or Australia. Working in the mines in Western Australia was becoming a popular destination for new Irish graduates.

   “Gran, what do you think of Australia?” he said over his shoulder to Granny Maire who was now pouring over the jobs vacancy pages in the newspaper.

   “What do you love to do? That’s the question.”

   “What does that matter? What keyword should I enter in this job search, Gran?”

   “Horses? You used to love horses.”

   “Gran. I’m serious.”

   But Rory entered horses and found himself staring at a complex array of jobs for a betting company.

   “I have to select a department now. What do you think? Dial-a-bet, Quantitative analysis, Risk?”

   “Are you sure you’re on the right site, son? What about equine management? Isn’t that the grand title they give to it now?

   “I think we’re on different pages, Gran.”

   “I’m seventy five and I’m telling you now, Rory O’Hare, you’re a born genius with horses and if you don’t follow your talent you will end up in a mine somewhere of your own making. Now it’s getting late and I’m having a night cap. Will you join me?”

   “You should be drinking hot chocolate at your age.”

   “There’s nothing that a drop of whiskey won’t solve.”

   “Get off my case will you, or I’ll end up in a paddock up to my knees in muck.”

   “Worse places to be. You never minded when you were a lad. You had a sparkle in your eyes then. Did you apply for that course?”

   “Goodnight, Gran.”

   Gran walked sprightly out through the door and into the kitchen where she would settle into her nightcap and the daily crossword. Rory’s eyelids were already drooping over the webpage. He read the long list of job titles ; business analyst, business intelligence analyst, E-commerce project manager. How did you get qualified for all of these posts? And who was getting the jobs these days? Nobody he knew.

 

  Maybe she was right. Maybe he should just check his emails for word about that place on the stable management course she’d coaxed him to apply for three weeks before. His friends had laughed, but something inside him had held firm through all the teasing and taunting. Rory tapped in his password.

   
Five minutes later he was flinging open the kitchen door.

   “Have you any of that hard stuff left Gran, because I think we have something to celebrate that really matters.” 

Granny Maire noticed that his eyes were sparkling.

Copyright with Cathy Leonard 2017

The Frenchman

This story was shortlisted in The Brian Moore short story competition and the Fish short story competition.
http://www.culturenorthernireland.org/features/literature/brian-moore-short-story-awards

http://www.fishpublishing.com/competition/short-story-contest/
Competitions are great motivators!!!

The Frenchman

She would close his eyes in death; that was all she knew about him.

                                          ***

The Frenchman who sold her the cottage made a living from his vegetables. Set on the edge of Clare Galway the stone cottage with its Stanley range and converted hayloft seemed suspended in a time warp. Oil fired central heating was a promise and, for the moment, Sarah spent her days lugging buckets of turf and logs from the out house, feeding them to the black iron Stanley that choked and spluttered and spewed out wood smoke. She saw little of the Frenchman.

                                          ***

“She sallies about that cottage naked in the dead of night,” said the farmer.

“I’ve seen her in satins and bows and high-heeled shoes wavering in and out of the cow shed,” said his neighbour.

“She only got two letters all summer long and them nude postcards from abroad written in Italian,” offered the postman.

“Sure I’d hate to live near any of yous,” said Ruth the barmaid.

“She crumbled out of the car last week,” began the Frenchman.

“You mean clambered,” said the postman.

“No, I mean she was tired, or arthritic.”

“Ugly and arthritic too,” said the farmer into the bottom of his pint.

“She keeps herself to herself is all you can hold on her,” replied the Frenchman as he smoothed the plastic tablecloth with his fingers. He seemed to be patting down some imaginary fold with long sweep strokes; thirty years speaking English in this rural backwater and still his hands fumbled with something he couldn’t quite fathom.

“Hold on her? Would ye listen to yer man!”

                                     ***

“How do people die if they die with their eyes wide open?” she asked her friends in the city.

“A knife in the gut.”

“A jealous lover.”

“A shock to the system!”

All predicted sudden and violent deaths.

                                      ***

She watched him from her deep recessed cottage window; a tall lithe man pushing fifty, his spade sliding easily into the caked earth as he cut beds for winter seeding.

Swallows dipped in and out of the turf shed, wild pheasants ate the grass seeds she’d planted in late summer. The russeting oak cradled the blossoming holly and she nearly trod underfoot fungi bright as hot coals. Winter was coming.

She’d best stay away from the Frenchman, for how could she close his eyes in death if she never went near him; it was the intimacy implied in that gesture that bothered her.

                                         ***

She howls by the light of the moon.

She walks naked at sunset.

She has teeth like fangs.

She pees in the turf shed.

She’s a queer one for sure.

She works hard…

He means for a blow-in!

                                                           ***

There was a light tapping at her door, playful like a tune. Sarah was stacking woodpile in the corner of the alcove where the black Stanley squatted, and through the half-door windowpane she saw the tall man standing. She looked into eyes that were black as the Stanley; his skin was rain beaten, and he held himself straighter than any man she could remember.

“It’s you so,” she muttered opening the door.

“No, a life-size model! The Irish! They love to state the obvious or talk in riddle. “I’ll do it now, in a minute,”” and he laughed, his black eyes twinkling.

“Have you something to tell me or not?” asked Sarah bristling.

“You’re a sour woman, or is it dour? I’ve come about the system,” and he waved his hands towards the Stanley. “I notice smoke from your chimney and I see you have it fired.”

“You’re an observant man,” she quipped back.

“What I mean is the electricity is cutting and the pump is not functioning and the system…” Words fluttered and danced. She could see him tilt and turn the spade this way and that, testing; words sliding across the blade, settling only when he had done explaining.

“You didn’t interrupt me!”

“Sure why should I? Thank you. I understand; about the system. And it’s dour, but sour works too.” And she closed the door on a bemused expression.

                                             ***

They say she has a hoard of illegitmates in the city.

They say she killed a man by simply sitting on him.

They say she has the evil eye and can cast a spell.

They say she stacks money in the chimney.

“She listens,” said the Frenchman.

                                            ***

She had never been wrong before; her intimations she always trusted.

But he appeared more often now.

Did the flue need cleaning?

A tile had fallen off the roof.

The hedge needed trimming?

And so he came, feeding her stove and her emptiness with hands that smoothed and folded imaginary contours on her cotton tablecloth and, stroking it, he told her his story. And once in the telling his eyes rolled upwards in their sockets and her heart stopped; she leaned towards him fumbling.

                                                      ***

Swallows dipped in and out of the loft that night and the lovers flew with them. They flew out through the roof and waltzed on the Milky Way; followed the quest of the plough and ended up in the Northern Star. Then they fell into a deep, deep sleep.

“La petite mort, we call it.”

“Little death?”

“And la grande mort, that’s death; the end or the beginning.”

Sarah began to laugh; her rolling laughter scattering the swallows that nested under the eaves. And then the tears came, and the falling of the ache she had been holding.

“So you’re not dead yet,” she said placing her palms over his eyes.

“The Irish!”

“I know! We always state the obvious…”

Copyright with Cathy Leonard 2017

Sherlock's Back

Happy to report that Sherlock, our one-eyed Moggy, is safe and sound and back home again.

He was found by scouts a few days ago at their camp in the Dublin mountains near Ticknock. We don't quite know how he got there, as it's a 10k trek, or what he has been up to for the past 3 weeks!

But the scouts looked after him well until the scout master brought him to the SPCA yesterday. 

And thanks to the microchip I got the call.

Thanks Everybody at Larch Hill Camp!!

We hope he earned his Badger Adventure Badge.

http://www.larchhill.org/