A BOOK OF DAYS
Ireland, Lockdown 1 ~ Spring 2020

On the first day, I stepped out of the house and it all looked the same, the road, the neighbours’ houses, their parked cars. But the silence was deafening.

On the second day, the scientists appeared on our screens, on our radios, broadcasting the figures. We could all die.

On the third day, we were forbidden to sit with our mothers, to hug our grandchildren, to breathe the same air as another.

On the fifth day, I listened to the blackbird singing from the top of the Mountain Ash, but I could not hear the cries of the over seventies, locked in.

On the eleventh day, the kids took over Tik Tok and danced away their torn lives.

On the eighteenth day, I spiced things up and made brown soda bread, with Garam Masala.

On the twenty-fifth day, I dreamt of lakes and cool fish brushing their iridescent
scales against my bare skin.

On the twelve hundredth day, I refused to look in the mirror.

On the first day of clapping, I got angry and shouted, “Respect the staff, provide them with adequate PPE!” I hardly recognised my own voice. 

Now the numbers are gross, too big to get my head around. Like my hair, too big. I can no longer look. I can no longer listen. I turn the screens, the mirrors to the wall.

Even the blackbird is silent.

Meanwhile the crows report the gossip from high in the beech tree, telling of far rivers, perfumed kingfishers and women with fabulous hair.

 – originally published in the anthology Only Connect Beir Bua Press 2021

 **

 FREQUENTLY USELESS QUESTIONS or FUQs
………………………………………………………..after Christopher Kennedy

Q: Describe for me your ability to work with others?
A: I didn’t hear you sliding in here

Q: Is there a person you admire, someone you would like to emulate?
A: Missus, who is still in the cot

Q: How would you handle yourself in an emergency situation?
A: Quiet dust

Q: What is your most singular quality?
A: The parsnips that have been sweetened by a taste of frost

Q: Is there anything about yourself you wish to change?
A: The patina of contact

Q: Anything else?
A: To become lozenge shaped, soft, smooth

Q: How would you like to be remembered after your passing?
A: The water cupped her feet

Q: What is your favourite television programme?
A: They gave rain

 Q: How would you describe yourself to others?
A: All creatures black are not crows

Q. How do you think others would describe you?
A: Now let’s see what the machine will tell us

Q: And your state of mind right now, in one sentence?
A: Over the winter how often do we notice the lilac bush?

Q: Do you have an ideal holiday place?
A: The first drops smelled of ‘hiss’ even though that wasn’t the sound at all

Q: Is there someone from your past who has been an influence on you?
A: Today we buried a woman, that is all

Q: Imagine you were an inanimate object, what would you be?
A: The key that was offered to the door many times

Q: Describe for me your social life?
A: In Ballyquin I once followed a tractor called Hibiscus

Q: Describe your time management skills?
A: They should do something about that

Q: Tell me about your hero?
A: A thin enamelled sky

Q: Describe for me your religious beliefs?
A: The large forgetting

 **

Flowers & Feathers
…………………………………….after Marc Chagall

I

The red wattle hangs in a semi-sphere
beneath the pale face of the hen,
like a violent moon sliced in half.
Her legs are…….thin
…….…….…….…..yellow
…….…….…….…..suggestions.
Among her blue tail feathers
some green and yellow feathers
for accent,
her tail is spun out
like the dress of a dancer in mid-twirl.
Her eye commands, her beak is open ready to utter.
The unicorn pleads with his eyes.
They will go together and search
for the blue gentians among the rocks.

II

Instead it’s we who find the blue gentians
in the hidden pastures on Mullaghmore,
with primroses, cowslips, water avens
and poet Sean Dunne, praying for the wells,
the woods, the petals in limestone landscapes.
We are bent double as the wind hammers at us,
swirling, curving, blasting along the ridge as we descend,
cheeks reddened, fingers stiffened by cold.
Later, we raise a glass of red to each other as
the new moon rises over the Clare hills, a thin yellow suggestion.

 ———————————– 

Margaret O’Brien co-founded The Story House Ireland (2014 – 2018) and formerly lectured in English and Creative Writing at Waterford Institute of Technology (now SETU). Her book, Weather Report: a 90-day journal for reflection and well-being, with the aid of the Beaufort Wind Scale was published in 2022. She is an affiliate of Amherst Writers & Artists and is the Ireland editor for the US based literary magazine, Trasna. She curates the annual Brewery Lane Writers’ W/E and the monthly open mic, Poetry Plus, in Brewery Lane Theatre, Carrick-on-Suir and runs her own workshops, Writing Changes Lives, both in person and online. Her work has been published by Arlen House, Southword, The South Circular, RTE/O’Brien Press, Flash Frontier, The Pickled Body, Fudoki, Hinterland, Beir Bua and The Irish Times among others. She was co-director of Poetry Ireland’s inaugural Poetry Town, Carrick-on-Suir, in September 2021 and, since 2017, has co-produced numerous cross-disciplinary arts projects in conjunction with The Tudor Artisan Hub arts collective. She welcomes contact through her website: http://www.margaretaobrien.com 

.