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en cuarentena & the rare ould times
Having now spent most of every day for sixty days in a beautiful house that is not yet home, this quarantine has me in its grip, a relentless barrage of questions about Coronavirus keeping me apart from and a part of a world that feels adrift and different. How do I escape it? When will it end? Will I ever see my own ones again? What if they get sick? What if I get sick? What if I die here? What if they die there? Did the avuncular technician who installed our new wifi router last week wash his hands? Do I really need to wear the mandatory face mask…
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the day eavan boland died . . .
Where I have been living since the beginning of the pandemic, there is no mailman, no mailbox at the end of the driveway, no letterbox in the front door. To send or receive a letter, we have to drive about a mile to a shop on the carraterra between here and the lovely little village which has been deadly quiet of late. While the package that was mailed to me from Arizona three months ago and then disappeared after spending most of these three months in Mexico city, the postcards I have sent to Phoenix and Derry and Limerick and Belfast have all been received. It gladdens me to think…
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in spite of himself
Right around the time that big old pink supermoon arrived in the sky last night, John Prine left us. I like to think he would have liked to pen a song about that, capturing it in lines that rhyme. Within the confines of four verses, it would be full of mischief and marvel, working us over the way a Prine song does, making us laugh and cry at the same time. I was sixteen years old the first time I heard one of his songs, and for that lyrical moment – and so many others – I am indebted to my English teacher, Mr. Jones. Every day, Mr. Jones wore…
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Covid-19, Death and dying, Dispatch from the Diaspora, Funeral, Rituals, saying goodbye, Seamus Heaney, Seamus Heaney
Ireland, I’m sorry for your trouble . . .
. . .feelthe strumming, rooted, long-tailed pull of grief.You were born fit for it.Stand in here in front of meand take the strain. From A Kite for Michael and Christopher by Seamus Heaney My mother tells me she and my dad were able to attend Palm Sunday services on Sunday,virtually, on the iPad I gave her a few years ago. It took a wee while to get the hang of it, she says, but it was lovely, the Minister and his wife reaching the faithful with Bible readings and music from an empty village church, one of thousands of empty churches across the island of Ireland as Holy Week, the highpoint of the Christian calendar unfolds. In this time of Coronavirus, my…
