Nuala O Farrell is a retired G.P. and writer whose two passions, literature and medicine, marry seamlessly in her teaching of ‘Narrative Medicine.’ Nuala has been published in ‘The Galway Review 13’ (Galway University Press), in ‘Causeway Cabhsair’ (Aberdeen University Press), in ‘Gypsophila’ and ‘Drawn to the Light’ magazines, and in the Samaritans anthology ‘100 Poems of Hope’. She is presently doing a Masters in Creative Writing in University College Dublin.
She
She,
who gave birth
in a cowshed, wrenched
in pain, her baby son
born into chaos, and cold
and the threat of slaughter.
She,
already shredded by
the competing demands
of Martha, always complaining,
and Elizabeth, pregnant,
at her age, and Joseph,
always obsessing about the census,
insisting she travel to Bethlehem,
on a donkey, while in labour.
She,
still seeping blood from the natal
cleft,
bravely, and because
this is their first Christmas,
and because, Lord,
if it be Thy will..
She
swaddles her newborn in the manger,
reassures Joseph the baby is his,
never mind the Angel Gabriel,
She
Smiles at the silly shepherds,
For now she must surreptitiously,
feed her infant, before
the Heavens erupt
with the Angels singing,
and the Three Wise Men,
so they say,
pick an ungodly time
to visit.
Mountain
Passing clouds whisper
their mystery,
into her lofty,
listening ear,
her shifting shadows
angle with the sun,
painting the valley’s
glistening lake, the fishing boat,
the snaking river, the shining roof,
the distant swimmer, the sweater shop,
the cottontop, the birthday cake,
the last corncrake.
Ice crushed her,
but still, she stands.
Rain and wind eroded her.
Fire charred her fern-filled
fields, but still, she stands.
Sheep and deer razed
her sphagnum sward
to barren rock. Her bogs
were excavated, her lush
woodlands felled,
by human hand,
but still, she stands.
She is the scribe
of the millennia,
writing the history
of the golden eagle,
the purple speedwell,
the white bog cotton, the bittersweet,
the tramp of feet, the common grouse,
the shy field mouse, the skylark song,
lovers long-gone, the heather blaze,
the lowland haze, on rough
escarpments of stone and scree,
recorded,
for eternity.
Christmas
Surely, I will remember
that secret space
in the attic where
I stored away,
the perfect angel,
poised, as she was,
precariously, atop
the pungent pine.
Surely, I will remember
that old leather armchair,
sagging with regret. Those
slippers, half-hidden,
in the shadows,
those reading glasses, quizzical
with interest, dissecting
all the gaudy light.
Surely, I will remember where
I hid those velvet, crimson balls,
ringed with glitter, swirling
and flickering,
with the history,
of long forgotten
Christmases.
And, surely, I will remember
that gaze,
across a festive table,
those secret spaces,
hidden, between us. That
last,
subtle glance,
of silent intimacy.
That smile.
The Galway Review 