Theodore Deppe

THE ROAD TO GLENLOUGH

for Julia Jo Sheehan

I first heard this tune

after your funeral, Julia,

played as a slow air,

but tonight the visiting Donegal fiddler

pushed it to double-time

to keep everyone dancing.

I love it that there is

no road into Glenlough.

Dylan Thomas

rented a cottage there for a fortnight

but hiked out

without paying--

he faulted Glenlough

for being “too far from Ardara,

which is a place you can’t

be too far from.”

I once started up the hillside

from Port’s

abandoned fishing village,

hoping to reach Glen,

but rain chased me back down

those slick slopes--

even in rain, though,

even without seeing it,

I’d guess from the approach

that there’s nowhere

lovelier.

Christ, Julia, it’s a year

since your family removed

the casements

from your bedroom window,

just as you said they would, and--

mind you don’t crush the roses!--

passed your coffin through.

You were our ninety-year-old

poster girl

for smoking, drinking and

dancing ‘til three a.m.

You coaxed me out

onto the floor at Club Chleire,

and while we waltzed

told me of working

in wartime London,

how you’d step out to watch

dogfights in the sky--

I suppose it was

dangerous,

but we were young.

Listen. At least three poets

witnessed

a robin fly down

and sing above your coffin.

Not one of us has figured out

how to get that

into a poem,

but let me put him here for you now,

whatever slight dangers a robin

might present to a poem—

let him sing

whatever he was singing

that simultaneously saddened and

pleased and

puzzled us,

as if the places that are most real

are hidden

in the notes of such songs.