All day we laboured under the threat of rain: faced hedges
with a slasher, cut weeds with a scythe, mended gaps in fences,
shovelled out of sheoughs the black glar that sucked on boots
and pulled by hand the weeds that stopped the water flowing.
The clouds over the fields were obscured now and again
by mist drifting off the Lough. The droplets that fell on shirts
pulled tight over bent backs and shoulders, weren’t rain
but the slow drip of moisture condensed on the chilled leaves
of hedgerow ash and thorn.
The work kept our bodies warm; the joint enterprize, punctuated
by grunts, snatches of song, chat about neighbours,
fake alarms about the bull and dead pan banter,
bound us together in ways it does the world over.
Bobby stopped for a cigarette, cupping the flame
despite the still air. She’s late with the tay, he said,
looking round to judge the time from how much we had done
rather than the position of the sun that stayed hidden.
Before he finished speaking I heard the clank of the gate
and was suddenly hungry for the homemade soda bread and jam
resting under a tea towel in a wicker basket and thirsty
for the tea with milk already added in the enamel can swinging
from my mother’s hand.
Except it wasn’t my mother who emerged from the mist,
but my father, striding down the field
to see how we were getting on.
He glanced at the pile of briars and hedge cuttings we had stacked
and scanned the meadow for any thistles or ragweed we had missed.
There were none. I hope you pulled the ragweed, he said,
It’ll grow again if you just topped it.
We pulled them, I said, pointing to a heap beside the briars.
We can burn them when this lot have dried a bit.
Did you bring anything to eat?
No, he said, its nearly 4, you can come in
and get a mouthful in the heat before the milkin’.
We loaded the tools into the wheel barrow adding any branches
thick enough for the stove, then hefted a few fence posts
onto our shoulders and began the trudge back up the field
to the farmhouse.
Take your boots off! my mother shouted
as we passed the kitchen window.
Have you got a needle, I asked, my hands are full of thorns.
Here, use this, she said, taking a dress-making pin
from the neck strap of her apron.
The Snowfire’s on the shelf if you want some.
….
Today I messaged that mist was rolling off the water and into the garden
and you wrote back that it was cloudy over the fields where you were.
In that second I relived a day when my hands were blistered
from unfamiliar work, and I smelt again the clove, thyme and juniper
of a cream I haven’t used in over 50 years.
I thought for a while of Bobby, long gone now,
aware I was scanning my hands for invisible thorns,
then stepped outside hoping for the embrace of soft rain
while I raked the leaves in a suburban garden.
