Smithereens Press Chapbooks Taking the Oath by Tom French | Page 34

North of the Village

He would live on the clippings of tin,
and if he gave the last of a lambing away,
time after time, think no less of him,
for this was good husbandry,
and strong twins fetched a sight more
than a middling threesome at Ardee Fair.
There is a mowing bar leaning in a corner
under a portrait of St. Martin de Porres,
a bearing still in the plastic he bought it in,
parts of the briar pipes he smoked
kept in a biscuit tin in the hopes
of making one decent one,
the insides of carbide lamps
from a life lived in a blackout;
his bed, its wrought iron ends,
as much a machine as the mangle
and the dung spreader manacled
by brambles in the haggard.
The stone path he took to the village
is a strip of high ground now
where spring grass gets it hard to grow.
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