Ireland 9

Despite the weather, or because of a glimmering rift in the darkness of it, I walked eastward up the Garavogue, past Doorly Park, past anywhere I’d gone before (they’d extended the river path since my last visit) to a place where the path turns up a great hill, and comes to a gate in a sheep field. There the hills begin. I could hear a road behind a line of trees. The path went on, but on this day I did not. The woods on either side of the path were alive with wildflowers. I think now especially of the purple fringes of vetch. I coveted the multitude of ferns, but here was no way I could get them home. Away from the lake stretched flooded lagoons, full of dinosaurian flora. I came to the parking lot where the lake ferry docks. There’s a long, low pier now, and that pier was peopled by ducks and terns and gulls, and a pair of swans with two sooty cygnets. I sat down to write. I wished a woman in the parking lot didn’t have her radio on. As I sat, I saw a strange sight, which resolved into the arms of two human swimmers. They came by no means directly across the water. Humans are fairly loud swimmers. At one point the lead swimmer began to weave around. The other swimmer began to call, David! David! David!” It was everything I could do not to answer, though I knew he didn’t mean me. Finally David heard, and they began to discuss where they would come to shore. The obvious place was the pier, but the swans were on the pier, and David and not-David discussed whether they had cygnets or not. They did. While the swimmers were redirecting their swim because of the ferocity of swans, a family with a little dog came down to the water. The cob hissed violently at the dog who, confused by the level of aggression, beat a retreat to me, who petted rather than hissed. When the men were on shore, David had a leg cramp and needed to be ministered to by his friend. The swimmers were friendly, even eager to talk about their exploits, so I spent the next hour with them. They got a ride to someplace on the lake and swam back to their car, in the lot where I was. They’re practicing for a long swim from Parke’s Castle sometime next week. Did they say 6 kilometers? 6 miles? They were older men, and David was quite handsome. You’d cast him as Odin or Finn McCool in a film. The other turned out to be Dermott (Dermott had said “David” twenty times for the once David had said “Dermott), and he was distinguished by having one ear (apparently artificial) at least twice as big as the other. They were happy and friendly, and had done a deed that morning. The Irish are not great swimmers, they said, and there are few pools and they that learn learn in the rivers and the sea. “It has something to do with the cold,” says Dermott. “There are fishermen who can’t swim,” says David. They blessed Michael Phelps for the change in this he might inspire. I asked them what they intended to do with the rest of their bank holiday, and they said their wives would have them working in the garden. I envied them their swimming ability, their easy friendship, envied even for the moment the condition of being married and knowing what you were going to do when you get home.

In the pools thrown out by the river moor hens chattered and paddled. They seem more human than other birds for some reason. Maybe that’s why they show up in so many poems.

Since I first walked the banks of the Garavogue I have had the conviction that the life of my spirt began, or obtained its present form, on the hills above Lough Gill. Nothing since that time has altered that conviction. Should I walk those hill until I find the Ur, the creche? And if I find it, what then? Lie down and return to the ancient home? Perhaps exactly that. But this time I turned back. Save something for later and the last.

I mentioned the first time along the Garavogue. It was 32 years ago. It was May. It was evening. The light and the water were golden. I kept walking and walking, unable to believe how one beauty succeeded another. Fish were rooting among the reeds, making them move in ways contrary to the wind. A group of kids were huddled to one side of the river, I thought they were gathering to attack me or rob me, but when they approached, they had found a puppy they couldn’t keep, and they wondered of I wanted it. Oh dear God, the puppy is gone, the children are old, and I hold it all in my heart as if it were this night.

Bells somewhere are playing “Flow Gently Sweet Afton.”