Poetry
Going home
Ray Givans
On Sundays my cousin puts on slippers, between
church and dinner. Framed in a window he's taken
up the stride of his father, grandfather,
squelches
across the cobbled yard. Under the slate roof,
where once snug thatch slept, he rattles
the shut door. I shake his gnarled hand.
(Ten years ago we last met, exchanged, 'Sorry
for your trouble'). Allows no preliminaries
before he plunges into the dammed waters
of our beliefs, credos. 'I suppose you were
at the Twelfth the year?' Clipped voices, smell
of boot polish, flash of Orange Order regalia,
swirl of pipes, drums, distant as Aboriginal
sacred rites. Yet, close, momentarily,
to splinter the comforting snip-snip of
secateurs,
hum of lawnmowers along a cultured cul-de-sac,
as safe, behind hedges I try to keep in check
rampant flames of ragwort.
And so, my cousin, you and I, earthed
in the same Tyrone roots, have grown
up acres, drumlins, neon lights apart.
As you lead me, my two sons, past John
Sloan's abandoned patch, I try to understand
your need for certainties: Ballykell
Presbyterian,
Lislane Orange Hall.
My deckshoes wedged,
precariously, between two caked slices
of slurry, I measure the distance of your nearest
neighbour as beyond a yelp. A neutral lapwing
breaks,
tremulous, below a threatening blue-black sky.
My cousin strides on, in firm, unbroken
footprints.