Cicatrix, and: Skinny-dipping, and: Moving On

Abstract

Cicatrix, and: Skinny-dipping, and: Moving On Jean O'Brien (bio) Cicatrix The farmer passes on the lane, she slowsher jeep and greets us, her waxed macis strewn with feathers, her knitted black cappulled far down could be a balaclavaand for a moment we are backbefore the peace, back to the dangersof unapproved lanes and narrow roadsthat crisscrossed the border. She is like a mixed message, idling withher engine running, and stuck as she iswith feathers (it is turkey plucking season),and that hat almost masking her,but the army green of her old jeep would not fit.A pheasant breaks cover from a culvert,and runs amok, his quick-fire burst of "kirk, kirk,"startles us. We laugh to camouflage our fright. Skinny-dipping I'm Irish, we keep our clothes onmost of the time. We performcontorted dances on beaches in Cork,or Donegal, undressing undernot-yet-wet towels. Worried that any gapmight expose us, lay some body part bare. [End Page 151] It was the Immaculate Conception that did it—if Mary could conceive a child withoutremoving her knickers, then by Godthe rest of us could undress and swimwithout baring our buttocks.We swam serene in freezing seas,goose bumps freckling our pale skin.We lay togged out on wet sand, desperatefor the weak sun to dry us, before performingthe contorted dance in reverse. Now as Iremove my clothes, peel them offlayer by layer down to the bare,a brief moment of unease before the releaseof water baptising skin. With a quiet "Jesus, Mary,"I dive in. Moving On I have left my father's house.As a woman who likes thresholds,borders, and doors, I have leftthe very stones and bricks of homeand set myself athwart, left the wallsthat still murmur with my dead parents' voices,my long gone grandmother even. I have rendered myself homeless, rootless,my fingerprints were all over that house,dead skin had been sloughing offfor generations. My children's dustand discarded fingernails filledthe very air. We breathed each other in and out. [End Page 152] I left even the garden that my mother planted,I who had inherited her earth and felt the samesuburban soil between my fingers, set my ownhollyhocks and quince to flourish. I steppedwith her footsteps tracking her through sunlight.I have set myself to the four winds, to a new house, with speechless bricksand a hearth that speaks to no one,having not yet absorbed any voices or echoes.The rafters creak like a live ship tossing in a seaof clamoring stars, they need to quietenand learn to live with us. For a woman who was so deep rootedI now live permanently flanked by borders.My new house lies on the boundariesof three counties, so I no longer knowif I am coming or going, whichever wayI step I land somewhere else. This black bog is like shifting sandand my head rings like a sounding bellin the buffeting winds. I have performedthe usual rituals for laying a claim, I have turnedturf, given a wide berth to the hawthorn,dug in sapling trees; my bones will bewell old before they lend shade or shelter. I searched the ground for an upside-downstatue of St. Joseph, that people plantto sell houses, had I found one I wouldhave righted it. I wake now to a wider horizonand not a tree-shaded suburban garden,In the evenings when dusk swallows the landI feel the slow cooling of loss. Some daysI just long for my heart's home. [End Page 153] Jean O'Brien Jean O'Brien won the prestigious biennial Arvon International Poetry Award in 2010. She has three collections published, her last being Lovely Legs (Salmon). Her latest collection, Merman, is due in Spring 2012. She was the featured poet in 2010 in the New Hibernia Review. Copyright © 2011 University of Nebraska Press