Nessa O'Mahony

Waiting Room

The rules for survival:

don’t catch an eye

on the first day,

look away

if their blank grief

grazes over you.

If still here the next,

permit a faint smile,

a nod to a fellow traveller.

But keep your space,

don’t approach

unless invited

and only then

with care.

Avoid those

with a story to tell,

a need to eat you alive

as they rave

about hands squeezed,

the twitch of a closed eye.

You can’t spare

a shred, a prayer;

it’s dog eat dog here.

The odds are too high,

if somebody has to die,

let the noose swing

elsewhere.

*

No news is good news

The sun has returned,

drawing me out 

to the seafront where you’d take

your constitutional.

The last time you came here

I was three thousand miles away.

I had to imagine your promenade

down the pier, then your choice:

left for the cliff walk,

right to Gallows Point.

Just names, then,

innocent of intent.

Now, sixty plus nautical miles

from where you lie

in your hospital bed,

the wind whips up,

gives excuse for the tears

that spring unaccountably often,
though there’s no threat,

they tell me.

No news is good news, I’m told.

And like a bold child

I feel cheated

that I must wait here

to check the phone for messages,

take my place in the queue

for family updates,

cling to each sign of progress

relayed long distance,

a tube removed,

an improved gulp

promising food.

Strange days.

Did I ever tell you that once,

back home in Churchtown,

glancing round your door

to say goodnight,

I caught your bowed back,

your bent knees,

a 78-year-old

Christopher Robin?

I crept out,

embarrassed.

Last night

I knelt by my bed,

joined my hands,

bowed my head,

said the words

you taught me

four decades ago,

though the order

may have been wrong

and the list of the dead

lengthened.

*

*

The long goodbye

It has been a year
since you left

the hospital whites,

and were swallowed up

by your own chair

at the fire

we haven’t lit

for years.

You’ve gradually

filled out,

reasserted your

grip of space,

of the remote control,

sprawl now like you own

the joint (and you still do).

Perhaps you don’t need

the iron rail on the stair,

perhaps you do;

when I follow you up

I refuse

to notice.

Will it be this

I remember,

a swooped kiss

on your head

as you sit before

the computer screen

that baffles you

more than ever?

Or scattered images,

cine-camera jerked,

of the heart-throb,

younger you

out the back,

or on a Sunday walk

when Dodder Park

never looked lovelier?

*

Accident & Emergency

That is no country for old men;

the young get sloshed

and stagger through double doors,

tattoos on their arms,

eyes stoned.
 

The old men wait,

knowing their turn

is a moveable feast

despite the bluecoat’s promises

they are eighth on the list.

And still they wait,

observe the to and fro,

the quick dispatch

of those who arrived

much later than they,

assess whose recovery

would seem the better bet.

Day crawls into night,

the digital clock

a silent mockery

(you’d need a calendar in here),

names called,

anyone’s but theirs.

Glued to wheelchairs,

their motions

at the whim

of orderlies.

The old men wait;

they know they have no choice.

It has been ordained

by those who perhaps forget

how time passes.

*

Deserted Village, Achill Island

in memory of my father

A gap between showers,
blue filtering half-light,
so we take our chances
on the slopes of Slievemore.

Those who’d called it home
knew about impermanence,
the reach of bog,
the gaping sockets of roofs.

Hap-hazarding lazy beds,
slip-slides of water
pouring down
the side of the mountain,
we settle for the track,
the safety of shale and quartz.

Sun wets white shards,
crystal lures us
as the track forks
to where a burnt-out digger
acts sentinel over oil slicks;
wind chimes music:
a plastic bottle
trapped by bog-lethe.

The quarry opens out,
slag-heaps improbably white,
as if someone had cleared snow
into neat piles,
or had scattered detergent
like there was no need tomorrow,
no white sheets to be spread out,
no single rose bud to be left
beside a hospital bed.

*

Invisible Monument

In a town square in Germany
an artist lifts 300 cobblestones.
Over a year he etches,
one by one, with painstaking care
the name that attached
some soul to flesh, to bones
that were rendered later
by fellow countrymen.

When done, he replaces
each face down
so the inscription is hidden,
and feet can step unaware
as footfall presses the name
deeper into the earth it sprang from.

We had one stone
carved with a name and a date
and a wishing;
planted it wind-ward.

Is it better, that facing up,
than memory that shifts shape,
reduces dimensions
to whatever fraction
the wind will weather?

*

Notes for an exhibit

Spotfin Porcupine Fish, Cuba 1991,
D.J. O’Mahony, MI31.1992

It catches the eye:
half globe, half water-mine,
outrage suspended
in display case 781 Vertebrata Pisces
on the first floor landing.

When threatened, it doubles in size,
swallows air and water, bristles spines,
sends neurotoxins till each tip sizzles
with venom more potent than cyanide.

Still netted all the same,
(there is no armour against fate)
transformed to artefact,
presented in great state
to one who’d done some service.

What else need we know?
That it spent a year
atop a china cabinet,
caught dust, snagged cloth?
That it was the extra guest
at many a family party?
That, seeing it encased,
a grandson made an excited phone-call?

A six-inch black-type card
acknowledges the donor
of whom little is known;
his dates are found elsewhere.

© Nessa O’Mahony

Excerpt of poems from Nessa O’Mahony’s new collection of poetry, Her Father’s Daughter, Salmon Poetry 2014. http://www.salmonpoetry.com/details.php?ID=344&a=12

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