House
sitting for a friend in Tuosist
I awake
before you to enjoy an hour or two
of creative
bliss, if it happens to arrive,
and admire
a panoramic slice of Kerry-
burgeoning rhododendron,
sunflower-yellow whin
fields uninterrupted
by high rise,
except for
the distant peaks of the reeks
that etch a
crooked trail across the sky.
And via WhatsApp
I tell my friend in
whose house
I am sitting,
to look out
for the dude wearing the traditional txapela
finger- thinned
to a peak at the front
speaking Basque
to his retriever and the waiter
while sipping
his café solo.
And that I
have researched the history of her house
and find
that it was indeed a dispensary
doleing out
physic and herbs
to the
rural poor of the townland in 1856.
And that I
have travelled even further back in time,
to the Bronze
Age, in fact,
for here in
Tuosist there are eight stone circles
and a
plethora of fulachta fias, cooking pits of the deer.
And so I
have imagined myself a bronze age dude
gathering stones
the size of baby’s head,
heating them
white hot and dropping them in a water pit,
now
bubbling to a rolling boil, to cook my straw wrapped venison,
twenty
minutes to the pound and 20 minutes extra.
At which
point I begin to wonder
if you are
ever going to get up
so that we
can put on the kettle for tea
and maybe
boil our eggs
three minutes
each
and not a
second longer.
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