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4:30 December
By the path, whose limestone bones have breached the patterned mud, a stiff yellow hose cracks with ice, framed by crisp dead bracken fronds, just-fresh spiked with the baby-green stems of next year’s snowdrops . Venus glints below the bright eyes of the last Dublin shuttle as the soft wafts of tractor smoke drift blue like perfume beyond the warm and hairy smell of young Herefords, safely stuffed into the storeyard, haystrewn with the scents of summer. A late builder caught in the city-white circle of a bald light bulb curses his blood-scarred knuckles and whistles with more sight than sound. His hammer, ringing on its cold chisel anvil, beats a deadline in the lowering gloom as stick-white frost crackles the cooch flat and buries the ground. < back |
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