David Kirby is a writer and teacher living with his wife and three daughters in the beautiful south County Kilkenny countryside. His poem ‘Match Day’ was published in the 2024 edition of The Kilkenny Broadsheet. His monologue ‘Wet Sunday Evening’ has been accepted for publication in the upcoming Fresh Words special anthology ‘To be or Not to Be (Volume 1)’. He is a member of the Kilkenny Writers Anonymous writers’ group.
Say Thank You
Eaten bread was soon forgotten,
My mother gave and I was young,
“Say thank you”, she said.
I was big on saying please,
My prayers were fierce and desperate,
Eaten bread was soon forgotten.
I was older and could not and
Could not put down my carried cares,
“Say thank you”, she said.
My cares eased, I met new people,
Made fun, played, worked, laughed,
Eaten bread was soon forgotten.
My cares changed, my daughter
Hazel hugged me, “I just wanted to
Say thank you”, she said.
My adventure continued on,
I was found many times, all that
Eaten bread was soon forgotten,
“Say thank you”, she said.
Match Day
I close my eyes, I hear the
Ball pop off the bas and I
Know that all is well with this team.
My eldest girl looks up, smiles,
My eyes open. Two team shapes, proactive
And reactive to the sliotar’s movement,
fast then slow then fast, fast, fast,
Full stop. A single green flag waves,
the crowd’s roar fades and leaves our
air but stays in us, with us, having left us.
Shapes, form, change, re-form; players
play through the lines, take contact,
relish contact, create space, close
down space; slip, slide and drive.
The ball flies with intention, sweetly.
Chances are created, prevented, missed;
unexpectedly, poorly, narrowly. Fans
bemoan the lack of fruit from trees in
winter, corner backs suffer nose bleeds
and oxygen debt; busting a gut and ending
up way too high up the pitch and one who
has adapted to multiple habitats; scores.
We go home, chat, remember and drink hot tea.
Am
Aware that I understand so little of the life around me
I rely on others to provide the research from which I
attempt to extract meanings, large and small.
My senses may trick me, others may lie to me,
I may lie to myself and be lucky enough that love
may change me from the outside first and then.
I fall and I get up and sometimes know when to stay
down, try to carry as few prejudices and prides as I may.
Nose blocked, I yearn to remember the essence of my own
savagery and the wild pre-lactose days of my ancestors.
I feel tricked and treated by my senses, my head too heavy,
my body and mind should have demanded road before now.
I struggle with my bonds, my environment, my issues then
laugh at ownership, long to smash the lens of self and not
go mad, the urge to control and let go, let go!
Paradox hits me violently as I ponder my own hypocrisies,
results of decisions not chosen, lights left on to guide those
lost home; myself included, myself selfishly first.
A Child Before Christmas
(South Co. Kilkenny, Ireland, 1993)
It was the night before Christmas
When I heard my Daddy snore,
I was in bed thinking of presents,
Christmas stockings and much more.
As I pictured snowy scenes in
My head of Christmases past.
With fairy lights, fantastic food
And bikes that were really fast.
I say a small prayer to Jesus
It’s not time to get up yet,
I wish I could think of something
Other than a new model train set.
I am pretty sure that
Maybe, I was good this year.
But it is hard not to have some
Doubts with Christmas Day so near.
I do wish I had been nicer
To Teddy, Alice and Violet
And I hadn’t called Granny’s
Fattening ducks, Donald and toilet.
Yes, I broke the kitchen
Window, obviously there was bother,
But I didn’t mean to, really,
I was trying to hit my brother.
I threw one of those marbles
(I got from Santa) in a lovely wooden box,
I loved to carry them around the
House in one of Dad’s old socks.
When I think back on the year
I was nearly always in a fix,
Each day I tried, to make it up to them,
By filling that basket with sticks.
Christmas day is nearly here
As I lie here once again,
I suppose I could be good for
Next Christmas. Father, Son. Amen.
I turn and look at my slow clock,
I hear my Daddy soundly snore,
He would surely be delighted,
To see his son at half past four?
The Last Steps
I could not carry the coffin. He was lighter now than he had been. It had happened to him over several years; a gradual slowing down. He went from early retirement to being one of the younger men in the nursing home. He was happy there for a while. He had always liked to talk to people and this happened there more than it did at home after he closed the shop. Then Covid came. His new-found fun was taken away from him. Bingo gone, music silenced and contact reduced and changed. His bedroom became his world. He left his radio on most of the day for company. He liked to hear other people’s stories. He found the silence hard. He would drift off to sleep each night with the radio on much as he had done for as long as I had known him. That first Christmas saw a visit through a half opened doubled-glazed window. We were grateful for the time allotted. Our family had separate Christmases yet his was the most separate of all.
His hospital visits increased, became scheduled and increased further. The fear of falls while in care ramped up. The global pandemic continued. In person visits returned. He got to thank my girls in person for the art they had sent him. It now adorned the walls of his room. Images of trees, smiling faces, sunshine and unicorns had a magic to them and made us smile. We chatted about going places. His one time on an aeroplane when we left Dublin for Birmingham and spent three nights in Stratford upon Avon.
We went to see Shakespeare’s ‘MacBeth’ and Harold Pinter’s ‘The Homecoming’ while we were there. He laughed at us going to see the Book of Kells and our long chat in the queue with two really nice ladies who were on holidays from Canada. We talked mostly of people who came to the shop over the years and the busy Sundays of my childhood before and after the two morning masses. The madness of the crowded shop as we helped to sell newspapers, butter, milk, ham, bread, back bacon and in the summertime; ice-cream. The same few regulars each week would hang back and let the big crowd off so they could chat at their leisure. The last man would leave at ten past one each Sunday and we would climb the three steps out of the shop and were greeted by the smells of roast chicken and noises of dinners being served to those already sitting down.
On a September evening, an opportunity presented itself and I brought him for a drive. Out through Carrick-on-Suir we went and around its streets, looking at people, shop fronts and the Comeragh Mountains with most of their mass and sharpness worn away by the slow passing time. Out towards Piltown, past the water tower and up the main street, Sunday quiet and then finally up the hair pinned road to Templeorum. His home unvisited for so long; seen for his last time. He could only stay in the car. His brother came out for a chat. Nature was claiming the soundscape of the once bustling village.
I looked down on the valley as that evening’s sun bounced on the many greens below. I listened to them chat. They said goodbye and I dropped him back to the nursing home.
One month on from that early autumn evening, my phone rang at five in the morning. I returned the call when I saw it twenty minutes later. I drove to collect my mother and uncle. She took over the driving of the car. I drove the arranging of the funeral. Physio and medication allowed me to be everywhere I needed to be but I could not shoulder the coffin. I read the first reading of the mass. My uncles, brother and cousins stepped up the slope along the well-worn way past eroded headstones, over smooth, compressed dirt and then onto grassier ground. I took those last steps with my wife, children and mother. They steadied and stopped to lower him. The clay walls of his grave gleamed as the midday sunlight met their damp hardness. Words and soil followed as my uncle at last rested looking down on the valley from the hill that was always his home.
The Galway Review 