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The turf’s been cut for a few weeks now. Its looming shadow a creeping presence in the back of my mind for over a week. Like dark rolling clouds breezing in off an Atlantic sunset—a puffy gang that suddenly pitches a tent over Galway Bay to arm-wrestle the sun for a couple of weeks. The bog is all fine and dandy on the page but the work of it is another thing.
I drove down Tuesday evening to take a look at my snippet of bog and her harvest was ready for some moving. The plots were marked out neatly enough and most of the peatlands were untouched. Long sausage lines of brown as far as the eye could see. I found my plot handy enough and recorded the sight to memory. Fifty yards. Fifteen or sixteen rows of turf in long lines, ten sods to the row. Probably, three evenings work at a decent sweat.
Cue a little internal groaning.
I wonder are the Irish summer downpours a result of all the prayers offered up to heaven for two days of torrential rain to avoid the start of bog season. Anyway, I bent down and slapped together a couple of turf stacks to mark my territory like a sheep-dog pissing on the side of the road and promptly ran off to the nearest petrol station for some pedigree chum and a coffee. While I love the bog, remembering why always needs a little kickstarting.
Late last week, I travelled to Kerry to meet a woman of, shall we say, the Irish spiritual resistance and our conversations sparked some new angles on ideas already sloshing around in my head about all things turf. At one point she described me as a bog warrior with obvious and pronounced dark masculine traits and this immediately triggered the notion that the bog herself might be a dark feminine. Similar to my soul, I consider all bogs in Ireland to be feminine, or feminine dominant at the very least for some reason.
I returned to the turf on Wednesday and to a landscape filled with white cumulus clouds, wind and no little sunshine. So—Unanswered prayers and Himself insistent on a start. Like with any new exercise or training regime the mind battles the elements within for the first hour. But, gently, gently the sound of the breeze and the birds infiltrates the system and a man can start dreaming new, clean dreams a little while getting his hands dirty.
After two lines and two hours, a ten-year-old Citroen Berlingo van approached down the gravel road and halted directly across from where I was hunched. A man in his sixties got out and seemed to be already in conversation with me for a good sixty yards before stopping the van. He immediately set about investigating the state of my turf.
“ Ah it’s good turf “ he said. While bending down and turning a few sods over onto their backsides.
“ Few rows in the middle are still a bit stodgy “ I replied
“ Ah, it’s grand, it’s ready for turning “
We engaged in the usual bog banter for a few minutes and I soon discovered he knew my father.
“ Ah, sure didn’t he work in the council, I knew him well. He cuts a lot of turf “
We both looked across to where his banks of turf lay. Some of it stacked but plenty left to do. A Romanian family are stacking sods in this particular bog at three euro a yard and impressing the locals with their speed and work ethic. My old man may or may not have fallen under the spell of their charms this bog season. In proper bog-speak my new acquaintance got around to asking this question without asking this question.
“ I suppose, you’ll be giving him a hand when your piece-een is done? “
Not an inquisition, per se, just a general enquiry into the state of affairs on the paternal ancestral line stretching back three or four generations.
“Ah sure, you never know we might cut a deal “ I smiled.
He laughed and turned back to the van. I watched him drive away satisfied I’d revealed enough to chew the cud on but not enough to dine out on the family tree. I glanced around the bog-scape and noticed two or three other vans of a similar nature scattered around the place. The perfect vehicle from which to carry out three or four different enterprises. You rarely meet a bog man that has a strictly nine-to-five existence or incestuous relationship with the revenue commissioners.
At the end of day one I was pretty happy and even developed a hankering for cheese sandwiches and some fruit soda bread and duly obliged myself. However, the old Irish saying “Tús maith, leath an oibre” may not quite apply. The week has been intertwined with interfacing my mother’s hip with Galway University hospital and the Irish Health System.
We have been complaining for generations about the Accident and Emergency departments of Irish hospitals and the inhumanity of corridors lined with trolleys of the sick. What is not mentioned is the numbers of staff taking up space on these same corridors. At one point I counted four beds in the corridor and about fifteen hospital workers. Nurses, doctors, ambulance service, physios, porters and the list goes on.
In the distance, lay a woman of a similar age to my mother. She was in a state of quiet wail with her left hand outstretched for someone’s attention. Her fingers were long and attractive with fingernails colored in the most beautiful shade of red. But, not even immaculately painted nails guarantee attention in our health system. Employees of the hospital zoomed by her bed, a mile a minute, ignoring her pleas for help. Maybe, one in every five paused briefly—fake-smiling promises of a return in a minute. But none returned in the minute that followed. Or the minute after that.
On exiting the system I passed a poem by Jane Hirshfield on the wall of the outer waiting room. I stopped to read it in full and considered afterwards that it was the most healing piece of furniture in the whole building. I took a picture of it on my phone but it was only after an evening in the bog I realised my full mistake. I should have gone back to read it to the lady with the heart painted fingernails and outstretched hand.
But, like all the others, I kept on walking.
Mule Heart - Jane Hirshfield
On the days when the rest
have failed you,
let this much be yours -
flies, dust, an unnameable odor,
the two waiting baskets:
one for the lemons and passion,
the other for all that you have lost.
Both empty,
it will come to your shoulder,
breathe slowly against your bare arm.
If you offer it hay, it will eat.
Offered nothing,
it will stand as long as you ask.
The little bells of the bridle will hang
beside you quietly,
in the heat and the tree's thin shade.
Do not let its sparse mane deceive you,
or the way the left ear swivels into dream.
This too is a gift of the gods,
calm and complete.
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Thanks Gerry.
In bog and mule , the slow hours keep their vow, and patients wait on hospital trolleys, learning the now.
A lovely rendition of both a day in the bog and the trenches of the HSE. Thank you.