This and That

"It's hot -- damn hot!" says Robin Williams in Good Morning Vietnam, a film I remember as being one of those must watches in my early twenties. And that just about describes the weather here at the moment.

I guess we are waiting for thunder, the way it seemed today as I drove from one seaside town to another, passing over higher ground. Normally I can see the mountains in the background behind the wide expanse of Dundalk bay as I return from Drogheda on the motorway. Not so today. Ireland was sweating so much that the heat haze reduced visibility to about twenty miles!

So, is that it? Another post about the weather - how boring. Maybe so.

Oranges and cream
ingredients for a long forgotten
recipe, the lack of leading
to a telling off.
First year domestic science
retorted sharply, “don’t let this be
the fourth week that you fail to bring
anything to cook.”

At home,
the quiet report faced a last straw,
a tidal simulacrum of possession.
The companies of hosts, the world’s politicians,
prime ministers, personalities, all drew up
at her shoulders as she glowered and spat
a final threat and the final riposte,
“Where would you buy
bloody oranges round here?”

Down the green verge road, past the local shop yard
and keep on going. Point your compass
south east, past the lake at Drumbee, a narrow road
leading through the falling tree shadows
as hours drip the leaden tears into silence
soaking slowly up the last few miles.

A car coming closer, you recognise the driver
as it pulls in.
“You’ll have to go back,” he said,
“You can’t leave.”