Wild Mountain Thyme.

Wild Mountain Thyme

Outside my granny’s cottage

On the Waterford Road

I’m introduced

To Patty’s Husband, Sean

Tall, lean, brooding

‘An awful quiet fellah’

With a look of the cocksure cowboy

The good one who saves the day

A hedgerow of hair topping

That skelped back and sides

Leather jacket hanging open

And hands wide as my eyes

Hands a tomcat could inhabit

Huge enough to hoist

Up a bewildered nephew

Into bird-merry air

With a step, a swoop and a yank

I’m lifted in flight

To the chesty-nasal honk

Of his mighty delight

And everything in me’s acrackle

The seamless squeal of the long

Moment not even fraying

When Patty says ‘Sean, that’s enough’

And abruptly in the way I’ve learned since

That a song needs to feel

Its own feet, I am

Grounded abruptly again

And grown up attention restored

To the matter in focus

Sean’s celebrated motor-bike

Motionless there on its stand

Maverick handlebars aslant

Cylinder, gasket, piston ring?

Something or other has conked

And he needs it at home to fix

We watch as his mate with a tractor

Arrives; they hook up a trailer

And Sean single-handedly

Heaves the bike on to the back

‘You’re a big strong man Uncle Sean’

I’m reckoned to have said.

When I sang at your grave-side Sean

I was twining that very same thread.

Ray Hearne

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