The pummeling near-sleet as I rowed subsided
Into a steady rain, and I knelt down on the jetty slab,
My hands bruised from the effort of rowing,
Tying the wet pair of mooring ropes to their twins –

a double-fisherman’s bend –

And, as though a mongrel dog shackled in a flood,
I could see the night my boat would have,
The big wind laughing, and its timber slapping
All the while, up-and-down – a shepherd’s tone sung –
A lament – on the storm-shook lake.

And I later learned the knots held, as I knew they would,
But, having failed to store away the oars,
My return was twice-marked,
Though the second journey differed,
For I cadged a lift on a trap and two,
And the melody of steel and asphalt
The Connemara ponies sang was a draught of sleep
To a mind poisoned doubly with regret.

And I once felt the melody, too,
My steps slapping hard along the asphalt jetty road,
Letrim to the East, the Bonet River near, as I ran,
Before slowing, my thinking fractal full,
And I felt the rain slide along my forehead, dripping down
An epidermal gutter-work of sinews, muscle and keratin,
And I pressed my hands to my face
To ward away the blindness of the storm.