By Charlie Pettigrew
We lived on the lip of the town.
A little council estate of white houses,
whose centerpiece was an oblong of grass—
pitted, stony, unkempt, warred over
by footballing tribes, the Harps, the Ogs.
Where coats flung on the ground
would mark the boundaries of rivalry and belonging.
When the light began to fade, the fabulists ruled.
They would form a circle on the bruised grass
and tell their stories. Of malevolent fairies
snatching newborns in the dead of night.
Of banshees wailing from the thorny mounds,
their red eyes heralding pain and death.
Of the headless horseman haunting the dark roads,
his severed head, rotting under his arm.
We drew closer in the gathering darkness.
The stories, familiar as the ground we sat on,
still frightened us. For had we not witnessed
the water rise as ordained at St Patrick’s holy well,
and listened to the spirits stirring
in the rags and medals on the skeletal tree?
Had we not felt the magic of cures and charms,
of amulets and relics, of healers
whose hands and whispered incantations,
had made shingles disappear?
This was our world.
As ancient as the Ogham stones.
As mysterious as the emerging stars,
drifting above us in the enveloping darkness.
Charlie Pettigrew is from Ireland, a retired lecturer now living in Barcelona. He has had several poems published in Ireland, the UK and the US, most recently in Voices Abound, a paperback US anthology, and the Lake Poetry, a UK online publication.
