Winter Trees

Trees in winter. Wish I could sketch those gnarled blackened barks split down the middle.

Siamese twins warring with each other.

Dancers

Warriors.

Tai-chi masters;gathering the stars;bowing to the moon

Shadow boxers

Shadow dancers.

 For some lovely sketches and paintings see Marie-Helene's Blog
http://mhbd.blogspot.com/2018/12/back-to-watercolour-painting.html

Tree in Winter

Stripped bare of leaves and illusions

I take the brunt of winter gales

And though you do not see the moment

when I shift my limbs, fraction by decimal fraction

to better bear the weight of leaf and loss

You will see me any winter’s day

Offer my mute twisted appeal to the sky

Copyright with Cathy Leonard 2017

Emily

EMILY

I hear the phone ring. I’m in the back kitchen. I know that by the time I reach the front hall door where the phone sits the caller will have hung up.

“Can you get that?” I roar to my husband who’s better positioned. “Though it’s probably Emily again,” I add.

Stephen is half deaf. Too much cold water in his ears. Too much sea swimming to be precise. Both of his ears were lopped off by the experts years ago, but whatever sort of botched job they did he can’t hear with his right ear. That means he always has to sit at your right hand side, walk at your right hand side, no matter what- if he wants to hear you, of course, which isn’t always the case given the way I’ve taken to rambling on. He shuffles down the hallway and into the kitchen.

“Was it her?” I ask.

“Who?”

“Emily?”

“It was nobody.”

“It had to be somebody.”

“They hung up.”

“That’s not good! Maybe burglars checking if we are here!”

“I don’t think they do that.”

“I’ve heard of it.”

“You’ve heard of everything.”

“Made it up is what you mean!”

“That too.”

He sits at the table and pulls out the crossword.

“It was probably her,” I say.

“Four across. Songs of … and Experience? She rang this morning so I doubt it.”

“Innocence. She often rings two or three times a day.”

“She must have nothing else to do.” We both laugh at this. “Innocence? How did you know that?"

“William Blake. I think she’d have better luck on one of those sex lines,” I say.

“And what would you know about those?”

I think about her voice. Low. Seductive. Husky collusive whisper.

“Have you ever actually listened to what she has to say? Maybe if we listened the whole way through she’d give up. We’re not engaging with her,” I say.

“To engage could be fatal. Nine across- moneylender who charges exorbitant interest.”

“How many letters? Given that it’s clear we don’t want to hear her side of it, why doesn’t she just give up? It must be evident to her. It must be frustrating!”

“I don’t think she has feelings, love. Six letters.”

“Tell that to the sex -line chatters.”

“Well, she’s not calling about sex. I’ve gleaned that much. She’s after money.”

“Usurer. Do you suppose we have to pay every time she calls? Like it’s reversed charges?”

“She’s calling from Stillorgan. We have free local calls.  No, it’s not that. Usurer? Are you sure?”

“How do you know she calls from Stillorgan? Our nine-ninety-nine yoke from Woodies doesn’t show caller ID.”

“She phones Ann too. She says it’s always a local number.”

“Well, that’s a relief!”

“A relief to know she’s harassing somebody else?”

“Usurer, like Shylock. Not much in use, but keep it in mind. Maybe Emily’s a usurer.”

“A new service provider?”

“How many letters?”

“No, I mean Emily!”

“What kind of service? That’s the question.”

“Questionable service!” We both chuckle.

“Still, if they used an actual person instead of a pre-recorded tape at least you could tell them to sod off." I say

“They’ve done that. You’ve done that. Persuade with promise of reward. Five letters.”

The phone rings.

“Definitely Emily!”

Copyright with Cathy Leonard 2019

Imbolg

I'm late for Brigit's Day but am posting these couple of poems again.

Brigit’s Cross

Its strength lies in the fold.

You bend the rush firm and hold,

finger fasten it to the centre

Turned clockwise and returned,

again and again, it’s the last rush

that decides if your lattice will hold

or fall apart or hang slack

woven through with chinks of light.

At Imbolg

Stooped to the rhythm of sickle

we gathered rushes from the bog.

Or, with our hands, pulled stems

that raised wheals and reddened palms.

We lay them in piles and folded
and turned and turned and folded
until we made a centre

that would hold.

Not knowing then that she was daughter of Dagda

Celtic Goddess, Crone turned Maiden each Spring

and that we were cutting deeper than bog

i mbolg, at imbolg.

Copyright with Cathy Leonard 2017

The Bully

For weeks now he had been harassing her.

 Their first interview had gone badly. He had suggested that he might change the nature of her contract and had offered her someone else’s job.

She had stated that it wasn’t in her nature to rise at the cost of someone else’s fall. The teacher he was proposing to drop from the programme was more skilled than she was, had been there longer etc etc.

She’d taken the moral high ground. That had been a mistake. She had cast him as a petty tyrant wielding his sword and herself as some truth crusader. It wasn’t a good fit. She didn’t even like the teacher in question and the feeling was mutual, but she disliked the new principal even less.

Then there’d been the discrimination problem. Sarah, a member of the traveller community, never brought a book to the English class. Kate had allowed her to share with another pupil for days, but enough was enough.

“Didn’t you get a copy of Silas Marner, Sarah?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“If you go to the office the secretary will check up on it.”

“Like now?”

“Now would be good.”

The teenager struggled to her feet, made a great din about manoeuvring out of her seat, knocked over a book or two and slammed the door on her exit. She didn’t return to class that period.

Kate checked with the secretary. Sarah hadn’t gone near the office.

A week later she sailed into the classroom, still bookless. Kate reckoned that a confrontation would be entertainment for the rest of them and serve only to prolong this agonising trawl through nineteenth century literature. Kate refrained from asking the question. But Sarah wanted to make a point.

“Miss, I don’t have a book. The secretary wasn’t there the other day. I waited for ages.”

“That’s not what I was told, Sarah.”

But Kate had an alternative strategy in place. She pulled out a copy of Silas and gave it to her.

“Now you have it. Page thirty three….”

“You think of everything, Miss.”

Sarah didn’t take part in much of the discussion. She was chewing gum. It’s forbidden, of course, but frankly Kate would rather they chewed gum than disrupt the class.

“They’ll all be chewing it tomorrow!” warned a colleague.

Quiet class! Could do with that. “Let them chew gum,” Kate declared. “Vive le gum!”

But next day Sarah arrived minus Silas.

“Forgot it,” she muttered by way of excuse.

“Well, that’s a pity because you can’t share with Emily.”

The sharing exercise usually resulted in low key chatter, a background hum Kate could be doing without.

“Not fair!” Sarah announced.

That day the principal hauled Kate into his office and accused her of discrimination against a traveller. She laughed in his face.

“What I said I would have said to any student.”

“You needed to be more sensitive in this case.”

“I need to treat her exactly the way I treat the others."

“What’s the problem with sharing books?”

“Maybe you should go back to teaching and try it out.”

“And you didn’t check up on her when she didn’t return to class.”

“What? and leave the rest of them sitting there twiddling their thumbs or worse! She’s over sixteen. Not an infant.”

“She doesn’t like you. Now there’s another problem.”

“Do you honestly think I care if every student I teach likes me or not? She’s not the first and won’t be the last. I’m not listening to any more of your drivel without a union rep present.”

She probably shouldn’t have called it drivel and referred to it specifically as his. She was on her feet and heading for the door. He was apoplectic, face beetroot, looking like he was mid seizure. When she was half way down the stairs he was still yelling after her, to the great amusement of a group of students on morning-break.

That’s when it started. The door knocking, the interruptions. She had hardly begun any lesson than he was at the door calling the roll, checking up on a student, asking about fire alarms, school surveys, parent teacher meetings, exam reports. He had an endless repertoire of spurious excuses for being there.

Sometimes he repeated this exercise a couple of times during the period. And on it went.

“I could go to the Union. It could end up in High Court. It could rumble on for years and swallow up my life. Lawyers could get fat on it; I could get thin,. They could bring in legislation declaring that: Students must be allowed to share books in school! Why not a referendum?  It could cost the Irish tax payer a small ransom! ” she declared.

 In the end, like Paul on the road to Damascus, she had an epiphany. She made a large poster that declared:

Recording in Progress.

Do not enter.

They did actually do some recording and since several programmes required it and since he hadn’t a clue about any of the programmes, it worked.

Copyright with Cathy Leonard 2019

Reprisal

After a long pre and post Christmas  writer's block I am trying to pen some new short stories. Found this link which might be of interest.
https://letswriteashortstory.com/short-story-ideas/

Meanwhile here's a story inspired probably by too much viewing of Love/Hate
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1625724/

The volume from the TV filled the tiny sitting room lit up at intervals by the lights that flickered through windows on the ten floors of high rise flats opposite his block. Half the apartments on his side were already vacated, families relocated to suburbia, generations of memory erased. They would soon bulldoze the lot and the inner city would be transformed overnight into a glass domed financial sector. Jimmy had seen it happen already down at the quays.

What would his Ma have made of this? At least he’d been hoarding his dosh. He fingered it now in his inside pocket. Not a lot yet but enough for an emergency. No way was he being transplanted to the sticks. Jimmy cracked his fingers one by one and then flexed them. He touched the comforting wad of notes again. He’d had to do things. Things his Ma would not have liked. But as soon as he made enough he’d be out of the game. He’d promised her that. At least he’d gone to the big sprawling graveyard, trawled through a dozen overgrown aisles of forgotten ancestors, shoved the bunch of daffs into a stolen jam jar and swore to her that he’d get out soon. The sudden vibration of his phone ringing in his pocket startled him.

“What’s the story?” he barked into the mouth piece.

“Mark’s dead! Meet me at O’Neill’s,” the high pitched voice of Squealer replied. The news jabbed like a knife in the gut. Jimmy reached under the wicker sofa and pulled out a bundle tied with a shoelace. Instead of undoing the knot he stretched the lace that was loosely tied and eased it off. The revolver fell onto the vinyl floor lit up by the glare from the TV. Last episode of Homelands, damn it. He’d have to forgo the satisfaction of seeing the shock on the CIA faces when they realised they’d made a balls of it.

 Mark dead? The knife in his gut twisted again. Who’d have wanted that? Who’d even bother to waste a bullet on him? Hapless, harmless, stupid Mark. It had to be personal. It had to be Chris, the squealer.

When he pushed the pub door what struck him was the silence. O’Neill’s had been cleared out for them. For him, Chris and Mickey, the Boss. The squealer was helping himself to a pint behind the bar, and from the empty pint glasses Jimmy could see that it wasn’t Squealer’s first.   The ashtray overflowing and the stench of cigarette smoke meant business, dirty business, when Mickey chain smoked someone was about to be taken out. Jimmy thought, not for the first time, that he should have been a goddamn detective instead of a petty criminal.  

“Hefo’s boys shot him at point blank on Eccles’ St,” Mickey announced, not bothering to even raise his head in Jimmy’s direction.

“That so?” Jimmy’s voice was non committal.

“You doubtin’ the boss?” Chris was slurring his words.

“What’s the plan?” Jimmy asked, not looking at Chris.

Mickey took another drag and slowly blew out smoke circles.

“What’s the goddamn plan? I’ll stick them. Just let me do it!” Chris roared

Jimmy noticed that the Boss’s eyes were no longer gleaming. It was settled then. The five point plan in place. With a nod in his direction Mickey got up and made for the back office.

“It must have been revenge. Hefo thinks we killed that new lad of theirs. The one found in the canal with his throat cut,” said Chris.

“Did we?” Jimmy threw over his shoulder as he followed the Boss into his inner sanctum.

As he followed the boss and closed the door on Chris memories of Squealer’s threats towards Mark on Paddy’s Day came vividly back. The same drunken Chris, red faced, slurring, threatening to stick Mark for getting his sister up the duff. Heat was rising in Jimmy’s chest; he knew that an ugly gash of red was now burning on his neck.

“What the hell’s this? You know who did this!” he said  to Mickey through gritted teeth.

“Bring in Chris!” barked Mickey. Jimmy stepped back into the bar.

When they returned the boss was stubbing out his cigarette on the corner of a picture. Then he held up the photo of two skinheads skulking in front of the Four Courts.

“The Donnelly brothers, Anto and Wee Liam. They’ve been sniffing up my backyard long enough. They’ll be at their local, the Blind Piper, Ballygate, tonight. According to my sources they did it.”

“The Donnellys are IRA. We can’t touch them,” said Jimmy.

“Past tense. Were. The boys from Belfast will be glad to get their dirty work done.”

“Hefo would know if the IRA did their lad,” Jimmy insisted.

“Hefo doesn’t care who did it. He wants to send out a message. Well, I’ll damn well send him one back.”

“I think you’re misreading this, Mickey.”

“Maybe you’d damn well like to take my place?” The glint in his eyes stopped Jimmy in his tracks.

Chris was already at the door. He’d be wanting to snort coke before going out on his big hit. Jimmy was about to turn towards the door when Mickey slipped him the note written on yellow sticky pad. Chris was already lining up the white powder on the bar counter.

“Read it and then eat it.”

Jimmy glanced at the note.

“Now eat it.”

Instead Jimmy rolled the paper up and made towards the bar.

“Here use this, Chris,” and he offered him the rolled up sticky pad.

“Cheeky bastard,” muttered Mickey. “Now get the hell out of here, the pair of you!”

Chris staggered behind the steering wheel and revved up a one way in the wrong direction. If they were lucky they’d be arrested for drunk driving and possession of arms and Jimmy would be out of the loop. Murder. Cold blooded murder. He’d promised Ma, on her grave. If he nudged Chris’s elbow, just a fraction, they’d be in the bus lane, hit a kerb and end up in Casualty. Chris had thrown the note on the dashboard. Jimmy reached for it now, scrunched it up and swallowed it.

“Jaysus! Was there any coke on that? You must be desperate.”

Jimmy noticed the sign for the M50 N. The airport. Freedom. Chris was a fool but he didn’t deserve it. Mark was a fool and he hadn’t deserved it either. Chris’s sister was up the duff. So what for Christ’s sake? Not worth a man’s life. And what if that yarn about the IRA wasn’t true? What if the Donnellys were still rank and file members? The boys from Belfast would hunt him down. There’d be no hole deep enough to hide in. Jimmy reached into his pocket and felt the comfortable touch of his wad of notes. The heavy weight of the revolver in his hip pocket took away his temporary feeling of security.

His order from the Boss, written in red biro on yellow sticky pad, was to turn on Chris once the Donnellys were down, just when Chris would least expect it, in the tarmacadam car park of the Blind Piper.

Exit 5 and Dublin airport loomed. He had two minutes to make up his mind.

“Can you pull up, Chris? I have to take a pee.”

“Now? For Christ’s sake. There’s a rosser on our tail. Can’t you wait?”

“I can’t, Squealer. Just do it!”

Chris indicated. Jimmy watched the white cop car sidle past them slowly, the passenger garda watching them intently. For a minute he thought it was up, that the decision had been taken off him, but then the cop car picked up speed and joined the long slow trail of cars sweeping away from the airport and freedom.

Just two minutes to decide. Over his head he heard the distinctive sound of a plane in take off, a trail of white smoke curling behind it. It was a sign from above, from his Ma.

In the wing mirror Chris watched as Jimmy began to walk towards the railing that separated the motorway from embankment. With one leap he was over it and then he was gone.

Copyright with Cathy Leonard 2017

Fire Making

We have different approaches to fire making.

You clean out the grate thoroughly, sending soot and dust skyrocketing.

Then you bury the firelighters deep in a maze of sticks and logs and coal and briquettes. 

To locate and ignite them is a veritable Turing effort.

I try random at first and launch several Cupid’s arrows in the general direction,

in the hope of an off-chance encounter with flammable material.

Even long tapers, improvised from yesterday’s Newspaper, often meet 

the same fate, and fizzle out before they strike home.

I consider the physics of fire: the supply of oxygen; ambient temperatures;

the force of gravity; and convection-

essential components of the manifestation of uncontrolled combustion.

I curse you several times for making the task so darn tricky.

Finally, I launch another match or taper, hoping that it will catch the tail of the previous missile, not yet fully extinguished, and somehow make the quantum leap to 

full blaze. Sometimes that works. But sometimes I have to dismantle your pyre.

And start all over again.

Copyright with Cathy Leonard 2018

The Magdalene

The Magdalene

It was one of those mornings when the sun seems to shatter your sight. Like shutters opening and closing. Bats wings fluttering. Broken panes splintering. Seaward all was quiet in the New York Docklands. Mary closed her eyes and let her mind wander back to Roundstone, Connemara and the cold Atlantic waves gathering momentum in the bay.

The white horses dashed against the shore, swept up the beach and then combed the shingle as they receded back into the sea. Overhead, gulls’ shrill cries pierced the silence. In her nostrils she could smell the tang of a dozen varieties of sea weed: Bladderwrack, Carrageen, Sea Lettuce, Dabberlocks. If she opened her eyes she would see gannets drop and plunge 20 feet in pursuit of their prey. Behind her the clouds hugged the Twelve Pins. Nineteen years ago she stood thus, a young woman on the edge of  a wave that would carry her to a secluded convent ruled over by pitiless Mercy Nuns, a laundry that would sap the last drop of her hope, and an emigrant ship that would see her embark upon a new life.

Mary fingered the letter that she held clutched in her hand. His writing was neat, a looped scroll that tilted slightly forward. She had learned to read and write in one of her households; they said she would need it to take household orders to the shops. Her skills were rudimentary but she understood every word he had written.

In an hour’s time the meeting would be over. Why had he asked to meet her here?

Was it because this is where she had first disembarked all those years ago? A gauche ignorant Irish girl reeling down the gangway, herded into a holding pen. Ellis Island, steerage class, and Mary jostled along in a motley crowd to the front of the queue. Questions, searches, medical checks, delousing. Her skin still crawled at the memory of it. When she finally stumbled onto the streets Mary had wept. She was finally here. Maybe she could find her baby.

In the Dockland a horn blew for the change of shifts. The sound of feet scurrying past her brought Mary back to the present. Men in grey overalls began to converge on the dockland gates where they poured in and out through security checks.

Mary blinked back the tears that threatened and recalled the scene that had haunted her all these years, a squalling infant in a hand knit woollen blanket in the arms of  stranger disappearing into the back of an Austen Cambridge. Nothing had prepared her for the loss of Joey.

She was yanking the handle of a wringer at the time, standing right in the middle of the laundry floor. The steam made fog so thick she could hardly make out the panic stricken face of Agnes mouthing something to her. The hiss of the water in the drains, the clank of the wringers as they squeezed the moisture out of the sheets, the noise was deafening. Agnes had to clutch Mary’s tunic and drag her out of the aisle. Sister Bernadette had arched her eyebrow and extended a warning cane.

“It’s urgent!” shrieked Agnes.

“Joey?” Mary’s heart began to pound. Three babies had fallen ill the week before. Three little souls gone to their maker, victims of diphtheria. Mary was making a dash for her room when Agnes pulled her back.

“Not that way! They’re taking him through the back gate!”

“They? Who?”

“The Americans. They’re taking your baby!”

Her legs gave way but she managed to stumble towards the corridor that she knew would lead her to the outside yard, the drive way and the back gate.

She had, of course, heard about this practice of adoption, but they needed her permission for that. It couldn’t be true.

Then she heard the new born’s piercing cry, the click of high heels over the pebbles, a car revving up, and the smell of exhaust fumes from the engine. Between Mary and her baby a gate rose over six feet high. She fumbled for the latch. It was padlocked.

“Stop!” she roared.

The woman spun around. The blanket began to unravel. Mary’s arms extended as far as they could through the open grill.

“Give him here! He’s mine!” she demanded.

Someone jumped out of the car and steered the faltering woman towards the back seat.

“It’s alright, Kay. It’s probably some lunatic. Careful there! That’s it.”

The door slammed. The edge of the blanket still caught in it. She watched the blanket fringe flap and dangle as the car sped off into the night. When she put her knuckles to her mouth she could taste blood. She must have struck the iron gates several times with force and the pain was now beginning to register. That’s when her legs gave way.

They said she had signed the papers herself. She recalled putting an X to some agreement or other when she was in the height of her labour. That must have been it, the moment they chose to take advantage of her, to trade her baby for US dollars. He would have a good Catholic home, they said. He would have all the advantages of education that she had lacked. He would be well off and well fed. He would be safe. Mary had let it go, but three years later she took the steamer to America. She wanted him back.

In an hour’s time she would see him again. Would he look like her? Did a baby’s eyes change colour? He had blue eyes when he was born, slate grey blue like hers and tufts of dark hair. Dark like hers before it had begun to turn grey. He would be tall like all the Bradys. The envelope in her hand contained no photograph so how would she know him? Mary looked about. Still twenty minutes to wait. It was not Central Park; it was not as though the place was teeming with people. She would know him or he would recognise her, a forty year old domestic servant in her Sunday best trying to look like gentry. Her shoes were hand-me-downs, her Mac was frayed at the edges. She had tied a neat scarf around her neck, but poverty clung to her like a second skin. He would recognise his immigrant mother.

A few workers were hurrying towards their shift, already fifteen minutes late. They would have their wages docked at the end of the week. Joey would never know such miserable conditions. He could read and write. He might become school master or a doctor. He might, if he stayed with them. And he would, of course, stay. What was she thinking? Where was the point of this meeting at all? She had been met with official stonewalling when she had begun to make inquiries all those years ago. No records. Burnt records. Lost records. She had given up. And now suddenly the letter out of the blue arrived. The boy was making inquiries. He was eighteen, of legal age, and he wanted to know who his parents were.

Mary’s heart began to pound. He would be ashamed of her. Look at her! She looked ten years older than she should. A life spent skivvying as a domestic had made an old hag out of her. He would regret that he ever asked. And what could she tell him about his father? Paddy Lunny, a farmer’s son, who was packed off to England before his mother got wind of his part in Mary’s shame.

The clock in the docks struck the hour. She had to go. She had to go now. Mary leapt up from the bench. There was still time.  A blonde headed lad was shuffling late to work just a few yards away, but apart from him the place was deserted. Mary hurried off in the direction she had come; she had to spare him the indignity of knowing.

The dock lad had just passed her and Mary breathed a sigh of relief.

“Mam?” The voice came from behind her. “Is that you? Mary Brady?”

The blonde lad drew along side her. He was the spit of Paddy Lunny, small, blonde, but with the Brady slate blue eyes. 
"Who?"
"Mary Brady?"
"No.No." she muttered as she walked away.

 Copyright with Cathy Leonard 2018