The Bus

FinsburyParkCarrots

Who's there? No. A shadow. A window shadow. Maybe a truck on the road. Yes. There was vibration. Or a bus. I won't go and see. It might be a bus. Yes, it might be a bus. Number 94. It would be right. Just the right light on the road. All the stops from town. St. Andrew's Street. King Street. That full turn against the trees. Leaves and boughs. Thwacking the window. Down then. Jesus Lane, Maid's Causeway. Where do they go then? Yes, Short Street. Everyone on. Short. An omnibus. Om-ni-bus. Those flourescent lights in buses and everyone looks dirty. Shadows on faces. Shadows. You hear things on buses too. Raincoat sleeves. Shoe soles on tiles. People. No, if it's a bus, I won't look, I won't. I was there. I was there and there were shadows and there were noises. Those noises. I was going to school, I was going to school and I had my packed lunch. I never had packed lunch but I had it that morning. In a tupperware box. I opened it, I opened the box to see. On the bus. Morning. Bustling. Elbows hitting me. Light rays, light and dust and morning and stange shadows. That turn. It was that turn!! The bus hit the corner. The trees. Diamonds, yellow and a blur. My heart, it lurched. Shadows. Dropped the box - dropped it. Sandwiches not wrapped. Dirty. Dirty and all the black grit and mud from the tiles and my sandwiches covered in dirt and the bus moving and me trying to pick them up and the laughter, and that boy kicking my food and my face red and tears stinging my eyes and them laughing and the bus going fast and my heart my heart and the shadows evil green on their faces leering snarling jeering and me hot tears leave me alone and they wouldn't they wouldn't they WOULDN'T STOP!!!!!!

Wouldn't stop.

FinsburyParkCarrots

Reeds, there were great reeds rising from the middle of the stream, some as thick as rhubarb stalks, all late summer yellowings of green and brown, shimmering in patches of muddy water sunlight, a money yellow. Their sound? A silky fumbling, expert and deliciously unnerving, setting the ears and temples on edge like the touch of dusty velvet. The wind leaned them pendulously, at times flipping their tips in the rippling black of the rush upstream. Shiftings of darting pike blazed in the brook at the reeds' sudden parting, streaking fast shudderings of light past the angling water wind. Coins of sun breaking through the reed stems caught the lip of a buckle on an open sandalwood bag, patterned and fragrant, laying by four bare feet on the daisyed grass. And there were eyes that flashed currency for a kiss, a deep meadow kiss, afforded by these brief shape changes, dances, in the ripple tossed reeds.

FinsburyParkCarrots

Your mother ... excuse me ... your mother is the only person, if ... and I'm saying if ... let's just say ... and I know .... may I add... it's better to be a fool and know it than a fool and NOT know it, may I add... may I ADD!!.... excuse me, I'm foolish, but if ever I needed someone, whom I could turn to, if ... I'm not strong, I like nice things ... yes, and your mother does, don't I know?... don't I know, we were from the same village .... yes .... like sisters ... and oh, beautiful hair, long, black hair, down ... and beautiful ... back in the village, it was a tannery ... ah, the old leather money in the tannery works .... of course, you wouldn't remember, you were too young ... but there was something ... it was a prosperous place and don't get me wrong ... and I knew her mother and father... your grandparents... good, fine people, and your grandfather had a motor car when no-one had one, back in the 30s in Ireland we didn't have much but we had good times, and I mean good times, telling stories ... and oh it was so long ago...funny to think... but your mother, and of course your father... finest, finest, hope you're proud ... but your brother too, and he did work hard, I remember him studying ... and he saw me sitting at the river on the bench because I like to look at the ripples on the water .... and I always remember that ... funny the things you remember... but he did work hard... and if there was one person whom I needed if ever... with the help of God and two policemen I'll never need help... but if I did, she ... and I shouldn't say she, it's a bad word, I should say, your mother ... then your mother ... would be the only, and I mean only... person ... in this world... whom I would trust ... with my life.

FinsburyParkCarrots

You will run the wet fields barefooted in the raining dawn. You will dally, lovedally down, skipping in windblown patterned skirts along the rustling dewstarred boglands by the mouth of Doona shore, the black ford, under a sky awhirl with raven stars. You will ramble down to the sandybank well, your waterpails keenclanking, keen clanking. Pails to be filled, to be brimmed, to be oceansteeped and weighted; a heart to be filled in an ocean dawn of rain. You will cross the green bound rushwet stones,dewshingle mistmorning sandybank mantled, your bare feet imprinted with insignias of grass and toes twined with skirts of bog pink posie petals. You will pass Corrigan's field in the September rain with Achill winds blowing your goldenhair, ablaze in sunny longshadow rain like the mane of Grainuaile on the prow of her proud ship, aflame and aglow in sunrise breezeraying seaspraying oceanrain. You will feel the wordless waterwhisperings of women whose mountain heartsongs rained throughout centuries of love like dew that fed deep veinous roots in the cuddled earth beneath your naked feet. You will skip the path to Corrigan's well, your broad deepthroated pails catching rainbow glimmers from the cleft of Saddle Head. And you will lean to the well's brick white grounddeeping wall, feeling it under your palmtouch to be, to be, not solid but a mass of fizzing, whizzing shimmerings of electric pulses, conversations within withinness, while your woman's breath diffuses with the deep, clear filmless water within, a water of a face, your face, bright, timeless, fluid, jewelbesparkled; a face liplapkissing as water, as dreaming, as diving,as fishpassing under the surfroaring surface of the sea in the shimmer shallows and deepest blueing gulfs of stream, of bending spectral light, of aqua sound. You will feed the deepest veins of roots of new wild western ocean blazing flowers; you will wave deep flower tangles in underwater sun, you will grace wild twines of rush underfoot; you will wear gold suntangling hair of a seaborne pirate queen; and you shall shimmer as the deepest seamade veins of the true heart's core.

FinsburyParkCarrots

Well you know it's said. Aye it is. That I know well. The tide will come. High tide. In the spring. Aye, that's what was said. It will come one night. Them currents is always shifting. Full moon and a high tide. In the spring, and the currents shifting. And all the Doons, all those dwelling on the black ford will be swept away. It says that. No warning, nothing.
It's in the prophecies. And the prophecies is locked away in the Church, in fact the Church of Rome. There was a man going out the sandybanks, he was driving the cows into the sea to wash them, I heard. one cow turned around and spoke to him. Looked him in the eye and prophecied World War Two and the bomb and all things that are locked away. Prophecied even things about my own family. And these prophecies are known and every one has come true to date. I had a house down by yours beyond, down on the bog road by the turn, over across there towards Fahy. Of course you could see my house across the field there. Mine is the one with no roof now, I still have the land there but I might sell. It's alright for grazing and such. But I hear them prophecies and you know, the sea takes away a good bit of the land every year. You can see when the tide's out there are tree stumps there. Your grandfather cut those trees. The tide's washed that much away since. You should be thinking of moving. I have a house in Claggan. Rhododendron and orchids growing along the roads, it's beautiful with the sun blazing in the spring and the honey bees big and yellow and making shadows on the grass. Come to Claggan boy. Doona's for the sea.
User IP

justam

I like these bursts of inspiration.

Especially your bus up there. Quite wonderful in it's atmosphere!

FinsburyParkCarrots

That "User IP" line came from another baord. I pasted that last post straight from an older post I did elsewhere. Ignore it.

FinsburyParkCarrots

justam wrote:

I like these bursts of inspiration.

Especially your bus up there. Quite wonderful in it's atmosphere!

Thanks but it's older stuff. I feel some new stuff on its way.

justam

FinsburyParkCarrots wrote:

Thanks but it's older stuff. I feel some new stuff on its way.

And I will read it as soon as it appears!!