Thatched Cottages by a Roadside

“Thatched Cottages by a Roadside”

by Eamonn Wall

Water wending doglegs to the sharp Atlantic.

Look, my father says. Observe how blue

is always gray and how the sun is blocked,

old son, by a shuffling in the clouds, by a

hollow foxtrot of a morning western gale.

“Dawn, Killary Harbour” was my father’s

favorite Paul Henry print; it hung above us

in the kitchen, atop mother’s willow pattern

delph, present with Jesus at every meal,

and just as silent. Today, I call across decades

to my father’s shade: Is it copper, ochre,

perhaps sienna? I have steadied your old

dictionary on my knees. Or is the roof

in “Thatched Cottages by a Roadside”

a kind of almond, russet, or even saddle

brown? Is that Mt. Errigal, he asks? Your

mother and I drove by it once. I took snaps,

longed to have a go at it when we got home.

See that big cloud, he is calling out as he

draws away from me, Paul Henry made it

to that roadside cottage just in time. I sit

in shadow by the artist’s half door. Pipe lit,

winding hours downward to the dinner hour.