Three In a Garden

Eamon Grennan

Holding the baby on my lap I sit on the grass and talk to my mother, trying to hold her where we are. We face away from the day's
headlines - four more dead in Belfast - and stare at the sparrows squabbling among the small sweet worm-eaten apples. I may not escape the raw beat
of the infant head against my heart, nor the
aging woman's state of mind who sees through me to the child she sang to as he took his first
unsteady steps across this grass, across the cinder path where the washing hung, swollen, and shone like sails. Between my mother and daughter like this, between the calm unquestioning looks they offer one another,
I can feel my roots, dry as they are, stirring, the blown roses burning my eyes. Something unspeakable is circulating: hungry sparrows, the headlined dead,
the wracking absence, the woundaround rush of blood I ride on.