Mick Walsh, Returned

Nothing like admonition,
The doubled frost thawing
Out in the green belt

Where trench from trench
Field mice cram
And scuttle across roads,

Not knowing headlight
From streeetlight until
The screech of a brake

Or, more often than that,
The rev of an engine
Hastens, breathes, jumps.

Like you, Mick, when
They called you home.
A desert rat sand-lost

Between two trenches.
One barren, out sensed
world outside the World -

Another away from it all,
The flinched obscurity
Of a two up, two down

Red brick council house
Until now forgotten
Mid-haze of acetylene

And machinefire,
Gold-shells folding
And spitting the dirt -

Miles from the conches
You'd hold to your ear
On Kielty strand come summer,

The wish-washed audibles
Of the ocean you loved
And gave yourself to

On that lifeboat night. Salt
Slipping your cheek, the numb
Of her lips on return

As you came in from
The botched rescue, two
Men never seen again.

Mick, you hardly slept
For two months after that.

And here, your first steps
Back on land, our western air
Pushing at your back,

Pushing and reminding
You of the first days
Perched up on scaffold

And roof, the talk
Of the town on County
Final week, wind-swept

In the slip and slash
Of a roof slate giving
Way, all but forgiven

Because it was you, "so
long as you held on
come Sunday!" And you did.

Now I see you, shot out
Of your mothers arms
As they keep you up to date

Of what's passing, passed
And yet to come.
Not knowing acceleration

From brake shift, caught
Out in the round belts
Of thought and consequence-

Thinking to yourself:
"Where to now? Where to now
it's all been seen and done?"