A few hours ago you rested against the roar of the 757’s shell, watching the map not the movie. When the dart on the display edged past Iceland you pressed your face to the cold perspex but you could see only cloud; a bright froth on the submerged December day that defied the small-hours time on your Toronto-set watch. They call you Dòmhnaill - Dhòmnaill mac Iain Calum mòr - Donald, from John, out of big Malcolm.
In the photograph my grandfather is a gangly calf of a man, wide eyes with round patches. Guga they called him, not rattling off his paternal line like they should: mac Alasdair Iain Callum. Just “Guga”, scratched onto a lichen-chewed headstone that’s splattered with guano. He’s buried shoulders to the sea, the wind breathing up kelp from the island dunes and tall skies reeling past in grey quilts.
© John Jennett 2009
It is coming on a fortnight since the birth, but still your son has no name. It was a breezy spring day when you collected mother and baby from the town hospital, but you eased the old Renault around the country bends as if the January snow had never lifted. When you pressed the brake to keep the car halted by the home-farm gate you thought you felt a tingle of excitement spreading up from the pedal. The wee boy stirred in the back and you caught sight of smoke flying flat from both chimneys of the farmhouse, like streamers in the wind. The car idled and you watched a wagtail draw a worm from the fallow hayfield, the diesel clattering away like an old taxi. Then you realised that your wife had not shifted from her seat and you were going to have to open and close the gate yourself.
© John Jennett 2009
When the tourist season was over, Alasdair posta brought a lumpy envelope to the house. After placing it on the bench my mother turned her back and carried on working at the stove. We examined it while we waited for my father to come back from a funeral, taking turns to call out the address, admire the red flash of the stamp and study its little picture of the King. My father opened it carefully and passed it to me to be read.
© John Jennett 2009
As he leaned over the table, he did not notice his hands unfurl, like a pianist stretching for octaves. There was no need to scrape a fingernail over the shell to know the sandpaper texture, as rough as the granite handholds that had grazed him raw when he’d edged towards the eyrie. Stephen had cursed the stain of his bloody fingerprints on the warm clutch that day, the bird mewing overhead, her ragged wings twitching on the thermals.
© John Jennett 2009
By Oidhche Shamhna, the evenings were dark and Peigi shut the oven door on the final cut of last year’s lamb. Earlier that day she’d picked two beasts for next year, which now dangled by their hind legs in the darkening Halloween byre, slit necks puddling into black-pudding buckets. In the kitchen she wiped her hands, ran the tap cold, and filled three jars with water.
© John Jennett 2009
My mother was a great spoon of a woman who had a terrible fear of fish. This had come about because she had once been travelling with her father and they had been late for the tide. The driver said he would get them over but as soon as the wheels of the cart sliced the muddy sand and the horses started to splash in the shallows, a wind came up from the West and piled the sea quickly up on top of the tide.
© John Jennett 2009
A few hours ago you rested against the roar of the 757’s shell, watching the map not the movie. When the dart on the display edged past Iceland you pressed your face to the cold perspex but you could see only cloud; a bright froth on the submerged December day that defied the small-hours time on your Toronto-set watch. They call you Dòmhnaill - Dhòmnaill mac Iain Calum mòr - Donald, from John, out of big Malcolm.
John’s only surviving son, you have flown home each May these thirty eight years. Home to cut and store the peats for your mother’s winter fuel, and now she is two days dead.
© John Jennett 2009
You can read my poem Tidal Flow on page 32 here:
http://www.sligolibrary.ie/sligolibrarynew/media/cathachaug09/
and/or my poem Storm Fishing for Souls in eZine From Glasgow to Saturn here:
http://www.fromglasgowtosaturn.com/archive/issue12/06.html