photo by Turlach O'Broin
_______________________________________________________________________
Ringing in Sick to Go Mermaid Hunting
Once when I wasn’t I called in sick for the evening shift
and went instead to meet you at Raftery’s in Kilcolgan,
we left your car there and I drove south-west down
the summer solstice evening, hitting for the coast.
We squinted through sunglasses at Ballinderreen and Kinvara
but didn’t stop, turned for Fanore at Ballyvaughan, you leaning back,
feet on the dash singing along to the Indigo Girls and Johnny Cash,
asking me where we were headed. But messing about,
I wouldn’t say, I told you: On a day like this, trust me,
it will all work out. We’re going mermaid hunting
and the signs are good for catching.
There were no mermaids though, at the pier before Black Head
just one dolphin doing her bit for inter-special integration,
she came in waist-deep to meet us and we were charmed,
and drenched. From behind wet hair you asked me how
I’d known and in my stupid humour I said: Oh you know,
I had my people call hers – that’s how it goes and of course
you pushed me backwards off the pier then jumped
yourself and our dolphin circled as if she got the joke,
spearing herself four feet skywards above our heads,
then vanishing beneath. Us two fools, we swam through seaweed,
feeling elemental. You’re half fish, you said,
and I said yea but I’ve caught you this time.
In Lenanne’s at dusk we had chowder and a pint
I sat with salty skin and hair and when you joined
the jobsworth band to sing ‘The Dimming of the Day’ for me,
you made every hair on every sunburned neck there stand.
You slept then as I drove back but I woke you in Kilcolgan
to send you down the Craughwell road–Me? I hit for home
but parked at Whitestrand Beach, the longest evening
of the year, too full of everything to go inside just then.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________
Sarah Clancy is from Galway City, Ireland, although she now lives in county Clare. She is the author of three collections of poetry, including The Truth and Other Stories (Salmon Poetry, 2014), Stacey and the Mechanical Bull (Lapwing Press, Belfast, 2011), and Thanks for Nothing, Hippies (Salmon Poetry, 2012). She has been placed or shortlisted in several of Ireland’s well-known poetry competitions. Sarah has won the Cuirt International Festival of Literature Grand Slam Championship and was runner-up in the All-Ireland Grand Slam Championships. In 2015 she was named The Bogman's Cannon People's Poet and in 2016 she was the Lingo Festival's Poet Laureate. Her work is widely anthologized and has been published in translation in Mexico, Slovenia, Poland, Italy, and Spain, as well as in the UK, Canada, and the US in English.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________