BOG TROTTERS
IN DEEP JULY
(Ballynahinch Hotel, Cannemora)
'The sea, and Homer....it's love that
moves all things.' - There was a sauce
left on the table, in a gravy bucket - or
whatever that wheedling thing is called
by the names that only stewards would
know, not me. The few men I am watching
come by to sit - they are big and they
are strong, here at the Ballynahinch Hotel
where I am staying twice. They have set
out from Galway City - I cannot really
understand them, and with their huge arms
they can lift both carriages and maidens too.
-
There is such a silence here as well, that I
cannot tell. A place like a car park where
they park such things - lorries or trucks
omnibuses, whatever. My stingy stipend
barely covers any of this - and I've long
ago decided to save money by not shaving,
not cutting a hair. It's all pretty simple, and
sound, and fair. The most beautiful of the
girls that come in here, they go that quickly,
never lingering on to stay - not tarrying, they,
while the others play. By all this, all this matter
undone and unjudged by even Jude Law, I am
worn down like a pencil tip : harrow my sideways,
needing a sharpening. What am I for?
-
In this thing of today (I shan't call it a world, nay),
they toil their times with cool patches of color in
heir hair, tattoos, and looking at screens and
messaging back - the unsaid, as if there was
something to say, by the undead. The bog trotters,
I note, now get up to leave, together. Not soon
enough. They have already broken a chair
and unfettered already a table as well.