Moth Myth, and: Cuckoo Spit, and: A Magpie, and: High Summer at the Seafront at Portrush

Abstract

Moth Myth He stole it from the sand bucket his older brother kept them in: the largest hawkmoth caterpillar, a brown, furry thing that jiggled between his forefinger and thumb. Obese from feeds of willowherb, bedstraw, fuchsia, bogbean, it was ready to cleave to a branch or leaf and secrete a loose cocoon. He put it in his mouth, casually chewed, tasted chlorophyll and flower off its viscous, hirsute flesh. Inside his white potbelly it made chrysalis, within which cells divided, shifted mass, made something new: an in-between creature that overwintered on his stomach wall, slumbered until late April when olive wings suffused with pink poked through the swollen sack, emerged followed by antennae, thorax, an abdomen still rough and plump- sole remnant of that former self, khaki markings now mottling it. A moth full-grown, it shivered and flew up toward his mouth, broke into the light, the yellow room where his agile mother hand-trapped it, brought it still living to his lips, made him mouth in and swallow it for fear that it would carry off his soul. [End Page 164] Cuckoo Spit Mullkerrins was older, always on the cod, swearing to God that bats drank blood from cows, that dog piss could cure warts. Behind his house, amongst the ferns and sedge, the sally rods his mother kept to tan his hide, there stood a dry stone shed where that year's spuds were stored. Inside, Kerr's Pinks fingered their white shoots towards the light that skulked beneath the door. We would steal in there when the coast was clear to look through his Uncle Colm's stash of dirty books. Mullkerrins would name the parts, fanny and dick, and, once, undid his pants to do a trick of hand movements and moans that made him split and bleed something pure white, like cuckoo spit. [End Page 165] A Magpie I. Ore's glint in granite drew your kin, before the Bronze Age dawned, to peck at light in stones that would not budge 'til man began to mine and forge the loot that lines your nest's mud-dome: the gold cufflinks and silver coins your eyes spied dropped under wash-lines; the brass buttons and scraps of foil you scavenged, pulled from rubbish piles; and every other sparkling thing mentioned in the psalm you brought last Sunday to my window sill, where eyes closed Sean nós style, full-lunged, you opened throat in praise of shine. II. Often down rough, potholed backroads, I've watched you pick through the remains of tire-tracked rabbits and rats, headbutt driving your beak through pelts for blood's salt slick, its thick red slop- the same jackhammer jab and cut by which you plan to crack Earth's shell and root out God, get your own back for the time, enraged by your blather, he plucked five feathers from your tail, left you the bitter black-white bird who loiters on high wires round here, the infrequent flyer whose smirk and stare says know your future by my number... [End Page 166] High Summer at the Seafront at Portrush The cut of them! Granda in three-piece suit, Granny in flowery frock and matching hat, as, slightly flushed, they pose for Uncle Pat, who's popped the lens cover, begun to shoot, in Cine Kodak Eight, in black and white, "High Summer at the Seafront at Portrush." Mild waves work the background, their drag and push muffled under the silent film's tick. A kite jerks left, then right, above a boy in trunks whose back and forth drifts in and out of shot. While to the front, they're there in the same spot they were two minutes back: Granda all hunched, Granny's face strained, her smile about to break, both of them waiting for some click or clack to say that's it, day noted, now relax, unhat your head, roll up those trousers...