MARTIN FLANAGAN: Grandfather Song (for Maggie)

Martin Flanagan spending some quality time with his granddaughter Maggie Tucker, then three months old.

A piece for all the grandfathers and grandmothers in lockdown…

You were eight weeks old when you came into my care,

Four days, sometimes five, a week.

I was grateful for your company.

You made me larger, more complete,

Put the house of my life in order.

When you’re not here,

The house gets blown about.

I can’t tell you,

The existential doubts you put to rest.

 

I once spent an afternoon with soccer genius George Best.

He said the only thing that compared to the buzz,

Playing the game he loved in front of big crowds,

Was working with kids.

The only thing that gives me the relief writing does

Is looking after grandkids.

I don’t seek to instruct.

Just co-habit.

With baby you, I rocked the cradle with one hand

And, with the other, tapped out a speech titled,

“Staying Sane, Keeping Your Balance, in the Post-truth Era’.

They say the hand that rocks the cradle

Rules the world.

That’s me and you.

We rule together.

 

A bit like an old married couple,

your pram parked beside my writer’s desk.

I knew when you were ready to sleep.

And ready to rise.

I would appear above the pram like an old grey moon.

Your mother says you smile with the whole of your face,

Each smile a source of wonder,

Could that possibly be for me?

 

I listened to your sounds,

Like someone in a jazz club listens to the sax.

You cooed, starting on one note,

Sliding effortlessly into another and back.

I loved that tune.

You were at one with the world and, listening, so was I.

You made few demands.

I promised you trips to foreign places.

I took you to the front room,

We looked out at the old jacaranda,

Whose gnarled arms

sprout frail purple bells each spring.

We waltzed through the back garden like partners in a dance,

past the lime tree, beneath the rose arbour,

your eyes flicking from one to the next

followed by your slowly bobbing head

 

By the end of our four months together,

It has to be said,

Your list of demands was growing.

Preceded by an “urr, urr” sound

Like a motor kicking over

And sometimes a beating of the chest.

You have your mother’s inland sea of calm,

Plus the energy that made your father’s family excel at sport.

The Jolly Jumper bounced a wild elastic song with you aboard.

I watched as others watch gymnasts at the Olympics

Only you were better.

You grinned, they’re so terribly serious.

 

One day, we sat and listened to the wind in the trees.

I told you a story,

How I was in a drought town,

Grey earth cracked and lifeless.

Enough to break your heart if you are from that land

I was there the night it rained,

Didn’t break the drought

But ignited the sharp perfume of wet earth and scorched air.

You need such courage to live in those towns,

To watch the God of the Heavens show no mercy for months & years.

I asked a woman of the town all her life

where she found beauty in the place

In the sound of wind passing through a tree, she said.

That moment when a breeze passes through a tree beside you

and you hear it sigh.

 

Then came the day, in the backyard,

Us sitting,

The wind burst through, blew things about,

you bucked on my knee and shouted!

 

You are gone to another city now,

And I am an old tree with no wind in its branches.