Deadlock
You say you wont,
I say I can’t.
We stare across a table
Mediators on either side
A compromise would satisfy.
Your hardhearted attitude
Intractable in times of emotional strain
Vindictive in nature
You seek ways to inflict pain
Ways to satisfy your burning desire to crush.
After so long many battles
I stand my ground
I have been beaten once to often
It is my turn now
To watch you squirm
As I turn the screws.
There’s a moment in my day
When thinking of you
Takes my mind
To places I know you go.
Seeking me I come to you
It’s all that matters.
Within me
You move lithely across the room,
A skill that captivates and intrigues
For I see you as ethereal
Re-igniting deceased passions.
I sink into your charming graces.
Lying in the predawn
Watching you sleep,
My angel stirs
There is no greater beauty.
Yes! It is me
I’m here just as you dreamed
We fold in each other arms.
Over breakfast
We laugh at past encounters
The fumbles and stumbles
That lovers make each day,
The ones you hope to forget
The ones you need to recall.
We smile, we sip, we know.
Our day is one adventure
Holding hands at the shops
Reassuring our physical selves
Touch conveys our intimacy
We stand, shoulders touching,
A contact reminding us
Of what we most look for.
In loving we discover
the other, it’s not all me.
The magic that is us
Our care and attention.
Treasuring every second
The nuances of each other
In intimate seconds before we sleep.
Platanus
I look out the window at the yard
Which lounges under the shade of giant plane trees
Their summer foliage
Spreads languidly across the vast expanse of concrete
Providing cover for countless hours during the hot summer.
It is a haven for the myriad of birds who populate my world.
The beautiful warbling magpies,
The very serious black crows
Who scavenge in garbage bins
For the tiniest of morsels,
To the pesky minor birds who flock in seeming millions.
Occasionally an owl appears, camouflaged against the bark
sometimes the kookaburra laughs its welcome.
His welcoming song amongst the cacophony
Of the avian choir who sing
Side by side in the vastness of these trees.
Come winter they take on the appearance of skeletons
Stark against the winter winds
Their leaves deposited at their trunks
To be blown by the wind.
Each morning a flurry of blowers
Men with rakes, working non-stop
The dropped foliage masses in knee deep oceans
Into which small children often disappear.
They are so magnificent
I love the sight of them
Their rich green foliage
Like protective arms
So very cool to be beneath.
The catch up on the story here are the links to the earlier parts
1 https://summerstommy.com/2013/11/12/story-1-tackas/
2 https://summerstommy.com/2013/11/13/story-1-tackas-part-2/
3 https://summerstommy.com/2013/11/15/story-1-tackas-part-3/
4 https://summerstommy.com/2013/11/20/story-1-tackas-part-4/
5 https://summerstommy.com/2013/11/22/story-1-tackas-part-5-2/
6 https://summerstommy.com/2013/11/23/story-1-tackas-part-6/
The Wake
In the time after the funeral, after the people who had attended and passed on their condolences to Tackas and Paddy, and after the procession to the cemetery to lay Mary to rest, the boys led everyone who was interested and it seemed to me about everyone back to Mary’s house where a wake was to be held.
Through the generosity of neighbours the wake was organised while the boys laid their mother to rest.
During this time I met some amazing people.
Mary had been surrounded by some truly wonderful people. Jana who lived next door had taken the preparation of the wake under her wing. Jana was a truly remarkable woman, incredibly generous and compassionate, she told the boys to go do what they had to do for their mother and leave the rest to her and her band of helpers.
There was Briano, the elderly neighbour who cried rivers of tears when told of Mary’s passing, but he put in to get all the alcohol organised and it seemed a labour of love for Briano who approached his task with great gusto and dedication.
Jana’s right hand girl was this curious woman called Isabella who had lived in France and was now for reasons I didn’t quiet grasp now living in the same street as Mary.
Tackas’ cousins, Jenny and Helen had organised so much of the service at the church, and Jenny had been a great help to Tackas and Paddy in getting the funeral service so beautifully organised. His cousin Helen was very beautiful woman, somewhat aloof but at the same time possessing a most beautiful singing voice sang during the service and her singing brought tears to my ears so filled with emotion was it.
It was essentially a meeting of family and Mary’s neighbours. It was the most fun filled and laughter riddled wake I had ever been to.
Paddy welcomed everyone, said they were to eat and drink to Mary’s memory as she would have insistent that ‘all the feckers who turn up for me wake better be pissed with a gutful before the evenings over, I’m tellin’ you that now’
One after another the people came forward with their own Mary story. Briano remembered the boys coming home from school one day and complaining to their mother that the teacher had hit Paddy with a ruler. So up to the school went Mary, her boys in each hand and presented herself to the teacher. ‘Listen here you dumb feck, where do you get off hitting my boy?’ He was so taken aback by her outrage that he ran from the room and refused to speak with her again. Then again the boys were never hit at school again, and they both got good grades.
Jana, who Paddy referred to as living saint, recalled coming to see Mary one day and finding her tablets spread all over the table. When she asked Mary why the tablets were all over the table Mary had replied, “those feckers at the hospital think I’m a retard, the dumb fecks, look here Jana, you see those blue ones and those red ones? Well they have to taken in the morning, the green and white ones in the afternoon and the red, the white round and the white oblong in the evening. What Mary had done was put the tablets in piles in various parts of the kitchen table she recognised as morning, lunch and dinner.
It was a wonderful afternoon of cheer and drinking, a lot of drinking and in amongst the many stories about Mary there was Tackas. By late in the afternoon he was well and truly plastered. And a plastered Tackas was a very mournful Tackas.
I found him sitting in the corner with another neighbour Rosy who for reasons best known to her had attached herself to Tackas listening intently to what ever it was that was coming out of his mouth. Thinking she may need rescuing I went over:
‘She was the best mother a man could ask for you know that Rosy, of course you do, you knew her too didn’t ya. A wonderful woman, she could do anything you know. A feckin miracle was what she was. A feckin miracle.
Did I ever tell you about the day she took us fishin’? Mammy loved fishin’.
Well this day she took us out in a boat she borrowed and along with her fishing gear, just a few reels you know, mammy never went in for any fancy rods and shit like that. She’s say: “The little feckers will jump on anything you give ‘em the right bait. Why the feck would I be wasting me money on a feckin’ rod for feck’s sake.”
You remember my mammy don’t you Rosy, she was a beautiful woman, that’s right isn’t it. You’ll back me up on that wont you Rosy? Of course she was.
Anyway now where the feck was I?
Oh yeah, we went fishin’ didn’t we. So mammy gets the fishin’ gear and bought some worms on the way down to the boat, she love the worms you know, loved the worms.
Anyway that day she takes a hessian bag to carry home the fish you see. My mother was a wonderful woman Rosy; did I ever tell you that?
I did?
Ok, anyway so off we goes in the little boat, I was rowing out to the third peg she’d say. Now why the feck the third peg I was never sure about apart from it being where she’d heard the fish were bitin’.
So I was rowing and it was feck of a distance but I made it. Mammy had her reel out, worm impaled on the hook and she cast it out.
You wouldn’t believe it but within seconds, seconds I tell ye, there was a bite. Mammy hauls in the fish, lovely size, though mammy wasn’t all that concerned about size, if she thought if it fitted on a plate she’d keep it.
So the afternoon went like that, mammy’d cast, haul in a fish, cast out, haul in, it was the best days fishin’ I’d ever been on I can tell ya.
I think I’d counted about twenty before she said: “I think that’s enough, now we can’t be greedy Shaun.”
Mammy had a fair heart; I’ll give her that. The hessian bag she had hangin’ over the side of the boat so the caught fish could be kept wet and fresh until it was time to clean them. Mammy was always insistent on cleaning the feckers before we’d heard for home as she says Shaun, bring that bag in and we’ll clean the little feckers ‘afore ya row back home.
So I brings in the bag, and dumped it into the bottom of the boat. There were two fish floppin’ about.
“What the feck,” she screamed and holds up the bag to discover there a whole in the bottom of the fecker.
I mean we’d spend a good couple of hours out there fishin for these two fish.
Mammy was fuming; there was steam comin’ out her ears she was so livid. Then she started laughin’. I couldn’t see anything funny.
She grabbed hold of one fish and looked at it square in the eye and says to it, “I knowed I’d seen you before. I been catchin’ ya all afternoon, you bin, swimming out the bottom of me bag and jumpin’ on me hook again ya little fecker.”
That’s the sort of woman me mammy was Rosy, a beautiful woman with a wicked sense of humour.
She put up with a lot ya know. Me and Paddy, well me more than Paddy, I was a right feck at times. I gave her a hard time, she was glad I think when I went to Australia. She suggested it, said plenty of Irish had gone there and made something of themselves, like me cousin Michael and his family, all six kids he has turned out ok. I visited him once but I couldn’t stand all those kids at me all the time.
Me mother Rosy was a wonderful woman, did I tells you that today?
Twenty times? Really should be a hundred and twenty.’
Tackas went on like this for some time and eventually as the friends and neighbours left he was sound asleep on the lounge. Jana and I helped cleanup. Her helpers were also a bit the worse for wear, Cousin Jenny was asleep under Mary’s table and Paddy pointed out that the sight of a grown woman under the kitchen table was not uncommon with Cousin Jenny.
Eventually it was just Paddy, Jana and myself. We cleaned up, washed and put everything away.
There was still time for one more drink; we toasted Mary, toasted Tackas, because of his wonderful eulogy and we toasted the success of the whole afternoon.
We all agreed we’d given Mary a good send off.
Artwork by Anja used with permission
Come my Prince rescue me
Take me from the bonds that tether
I am weary of the endless search
The never-ending moments when all is lost
I do not want to lose hope
Nor do I want to forget
The moments when I craved freedom
The times you called and I could not answer
As shackled I was
In pain and desolate
In a land that had lost all sense of joy.
My prayer has been
That through the mists
The fogs that enclose me
You will seek me out
Find me before it is too late
For I fear the darkness may
Have its final say, and I shall be gone
Only a memory
A photo on a wall
A moment in time
When all was good
When flowers bloomed
The smell of roses was sweet
When I was loved
and all was safe.
I reached into your heart today
I was curious as to what lay there
was there a beat
was there life
what lies within
where life is nurtured
and now there sings a delight
only a few are gifted to hear.
For in your heart I found not just a beat
but love and all that goes with that
compassion and forgiveness
strength and fortitude
marvellous qualities
many seek but few attain.
and though I know you do get down
that at times you feel yourself
dragged to the ground
from those you cannot control
who walk on you
push and pull
and expect you to take their pain
and soak it up.
its hard when that reservoir
is already to overflow
to make more space where
pain and sorrow
acceptance and love all have to co-exist
but you do,
for your heart not beats
it loves
loves without condition
forever open.
Before us stood, Oscar Davison, the weediest man, I have ever seen. He had come before the Town council to explain his actions in what we believed was his selling us out to unscrupulous developers who ripped the savings from the town and who left us with nothing but the scared landscape where they once proposed a new and exciting development. We would all make money, we would all profit from this enterprise and it was an offer too good to give up on.
Planning had gone ahead on the proposal. There would new homes, new shops, new businesses and most of all hope for a dying town.
It was like we were offered a chance to recover from what had already been a terrible drought in which many in the farming community had lost livestock and many their entire livelihood.
We had been sold on the idea, a new community would emerge, new mines would be opened in what we were led to believe were coal rich paddocks around the town.
After such a long time in dire straits the change to change our luck and our prospects was too good to deny.
Everyone sunk what money they had into the idea. Donations were made, records were kept of monies given it all appeared above board.
Then overnight the developers disappeared, along with all our savings. It was several days before the deception was discovered. By then the culprits had made their getaway and we were left with nothing.
Oscar Davison was the town’s liaison person, through him we heard news from the developers, through him we put our money into the project. Through him we felt we were made to look stupid, country bumpkins, uneducated, easy marks for these people who had not blinked once in taking from us all we had.
Oscar had worked for the bank and was the obvious person to take up the challenge on behalf of the bank and the developers.
But he had been stung too. He was as penniless as everyone else. But the community held him responsible, as there had to be someone on whom the town’s wrath could descend.
In the days following the revealing of the deception Oscars house had been rocked, his car vandalised, his children terrorised and his wife assaulted in the main street. So much so that he had had to send them away while he battled the town and their opinions.
He quickly found that everywhere he went he was not welcomed. Not one person felt sorry for him in any way, as they argued he should have suspected something was wrong at some point.
The meeting was called to order and the Mayor called for a motion to declare Oscar a persona non grata. That way they planned to send him from their town forever. The motion was moved and seconded unanimously.
Oscar then stood and said he wanted to say something. His appearance was greeted with boos from the packed room. The Mayor held for silence and directed Oscar to speak, as he had a right to.
My friends like you I have also lost everything in this debacle. I too am angry that I allowed myself to be duped in this way. But I have suffered far more than any of you. Each of you have your homes, and your families. You have taken my family from me. They have gone away unable to withstand the anger you feel and directed at them. There were innocents in this.
I look around at those I once invited into my home, those who invited my family to share a meal with your family.
My home you have destroyed. My house is unlivable such is the destruction it was subjected to.
My life has become unlivable. I want you to remember that like you I was enthusiastic about the prospects for the town that this development promised. Like you I too am penniless, but I am probably more penniless than any of you. You have taken way my sense of belonging. My family you have destroyed, my sense of community you have shattered. This was a wonderful community to live in and I am so saddened that you have attributed the sole blame for this onto me.
I want to propose that as of tonight we work together to rebuild our town. The police will find those responsible. I have given them every piece of information I can to assist in the recovery of your money.
I know that tonight you have come here to have me thrown out of town but rather, despite how I feel about you right now, how crushed I am by your accusations that I was part of this scam, we have good people living here, we have the makings of a strong community.
So if it is your wish to cast me out then so be it.
Rather it is my wish that you take me back and together we build our town, our community, our sense of self.
Thank you.
Mary Elizabeth Tackan
My mother Mary was born in 1925 in the town of Loughrea in country Galway. She grew up with an older brother Bill, who is sadly passed now.
My mam lived in what in those years would have been a comfortable family.
Her mother was an enterprising and social woman and their home was complete with a tennis court and mam spent many an afternoon and weekend out on the tennis court. She would even receive phone calls from her mother asking her to come home during her lunch break to make up a foursome for a game.
My mother was given an elementary education, which in her day meant she could read and write. More importantly she was taught by her own mam the art of housekeeping, repairing and fixing all and everything you could possibly imagine.
And she could fix most things, from the toaster, the washing machine to the taps and the toilet. Unblocking the toilet she was very adept at.
She could cook anything and it was always a grand feast even on those nights where she didn’t have much but we always felt we ate like kings.
My brother and I both know of the sacrifices she made to give us the things we have in life. She was fierce about education; she pushed us out the door every morning no matter what we said was wrong with us telling us ‘you’ll be alright once you get going.’
She did work, before she met my dad she worked in an office as I said before not too far from home where she would ride her bike back and forth, quickly enough it seems to get in a game of tennis during lunch.
She met my dad when he and some mates came to town to attend a dance one summers night. She fell in love with the handsome young man, who was shy and stumbled over his first request to ask her to dance.
They married six months later in St Joseph’s Church and settled here in town.
And so married life began. Soon there was a small boy called Patrick, Paddy, and two years later meself.
Because mam was a sporty type of person we were all encouraged to play a sport.
Paddy became a tennis payer like mam, and me well I was more into football and that’s where she was happy to send me.
Our mother was a fiercely political woman and I am going to use a few of her sayings here so please excuse the Irish, of politicians she’d say: ’You could trust the feckers as far as ya could throw them, and you’d never be able to chuck the feckers far enough then.’
On sport she’s say: ‘Now listen you boys you got to get out there and do of ya best, you hear me, no mamby pamby excuses for getting hurt or not havin’ a go, I want you to come off bloody.’ I should point out that our mam didn’t mean literally bloody, though she probably wouldn’t have minded as she did enjoy a good donnybrook, but rather she wanted to see us come off the field exhausted from giving our best.
‘I don’t care how hard you play, and how disgusted you might be by your efforts, as remember this boys the best players have a bad day every so often, but I’ll tan your fecking hides if I don’t see ya’s shaking hands with your opponents, when the games over, its over, none of this sulking and picking a fight, or you’ll be havin one with me.’
It was this quality that endeared us to our mam, and which we hold as a truth, play hard, play fair but always be gracious in victory or defeat. We have our mam to thank for that quality about us both. And believe me we’ve had more than our fair share of defeats.
When Mam was diagnosed with her cancer, we were shocked, Mam was philosophical.
‘I’m not getting any younger boys in case ya’s haven’t noticed. Something’s gonna get me in the end you know, I wont live forever, God forbid. But this feckers gonna know what he’s about by the time he’s finished with me.’
And so our mam set out on her hardest fight of all. She went to and received every treatment she could. She never complained, she fought with every inch of her being.
Our mam’s the bravest person I’ve ever known.
She stayed with us up until the end. She was so pleased to see me when I returned, I now feel some pangs of guilt over not coming home earlier, but she said to me, ‘Shaun, you go through life doing what you do, you take responsibility for you, the rest of us feckers can go feck ourselves because in the end, my boy, its you who has to live. You will live beyond me, you will grow to be a man I know I will proud of, you do what you believe is right. The rest will sort itself out in time.’
When Paddy and I were called into the hospital, we knew what we were in for, but as always our mam surprised us, she stirred when we arrived, it was like she was expecting us. Paddy and I sat either side of her, we held her hands, and she held ours, I could feel her grip, then she looked at each of us, smiled, and I saw what I will always know was her love given to us at that moment, like we were to hold it within us. Her grip lessened and she slipped from us. After such a long fight, she was ready to go and leave us with the greatest legacy of all, her love.
so true are your words
I blush sometimes at your perception
the vision you have, so fine and so in tune
with where you think I am at
my scatteredness
my prattle, which takes up air space
for that is all it often is
a taking up of precious space
of moments in time
you either reach for and take
or let slip by
like you really don’t care
or you shouldn’t go there.
we are but human and we are destined to fall
say the wrong thing
stuff up on a daily basis
but those are often endearing in a bizarre way
and we look for them
we seek them
those identifying remarks
that may us cringe one day
and rejoice in each other another.
I have in my yard a vast array of birds
some nest
some hunt
some attack at certain times of the year.
I am forever in wonder
the colour
the sounds
the chirping
the singing.
Right now I hear the choir
singing their own rendition
of evening song.
Come rest my love
upon this weary heart
soak in my love
I give it freely
that you may
regenerate
grow strong
smile and once again
love me.
Morpethroad 