Berets and Spanish dogs

 

I remember someone admitting

that all they could remember from War and Peace

was the story of a policeman tied to the back of a bear

and thrown into the canal.

And having read the Eye Witness guide to San Sebastian

on a flight from Dublin to Bilbao

and tasted, on arrival, the city's Top Ten 

and a plate or two of pintxos,

I have to admit that the daily highlight for me 

was the fellow at the corner cafe,

his black txpela, finger softened to a peaked front

speaking basque to his dog

as he sipped his cafe solo.

A caricature almost of a Basque separatist,

lean to the point of wiry, or visa versa,

nonchalant to the point of dour.

And given my own Celtic ancestry

I bought myself a beret,

or rather several of them

But failed to create the same effect-

lacking perhaps the required fluency in Gaelic,

the correct amount of finger dexterity,

never mind the dog,

and not forgetting my complete lack of nonchalance.

Copyright 2026 Cathy Leonard

Not a Still Life

 

Friday morning and having

no grand design or marble statue

to write a poem about

I look out my front window-

where Kit is hunkered beneath the white beam

his one eye cocked on a wood pigeon

sitting on a high rise wire observing-

cars breaking, halting and reversing,

angling around lorries delivering

bricks and mortar to our neighbour's garden,

and kids on bikes schoolward bound, 

speed lines flying from their spokes

as if they were in the final stage of La Vuelta.

The white beam shakes its berried boughs

and pigeon ascends to the highest branch,

while around the tree trunk a cat's tail

is snaking upwards.

Seriously,

how far does he think he's going to get?

What with his one eye and two pins in his hip

and his nine lives already spent?

Copyright 2026 Cathy Leonard

On Maeve Binchey's commemorative coin

 I wonder who collects collector coins?

And the unveiling of them seems to me 

to be a risky business altogether

for said coin could easily slip between the folds

of said veil and miss the show altogether

or be swept away by the flamboyant 

performance of the Central Bank unveiler

right into the pit of the auditorium,

maybe even reaching the gods,

like those tennis balls at Wimbledon

only returned at the behest of the umpire

threatening to suspend the match.

Anyway our very own Maeve Binchey

is to be honoured by the minting and unveiling

of a 15 euro silver proof coin,

more than seven times the value of the U2 coup.

A surprise ending. She would have loved that.

But given that she polled ahead of Jane Austen

and Charles Dickens and even Stephen King

in a millennial survey

and given her appearance on Oprah, The Late Late,

and even Fair City,

I say fair enough, especially for a woman 

who once described Beckett's spikey hair

as the probable result of a poor Brylcreem job.

Copyright 2026 Cathy Leonard