Willow Man

After a visit by Michael Hartnett to Virginia House, Tallaght, July 1993

He arrived late in a pre-booked taxi but I’d wait Longer even for that first glimpse of him leaning through the doorway as if a birthing, shoulders coming first, then the rest. This small, dark man. Brooding eyes, tweed jacket, cap peaked as a diviner’s rod.

Half in, half out, unsettled like a foal finding its awkward stride before shufflings of paper. His voice grown strong, clear well water, child-like magic spilling from his mouth.

Poems drifted outside; willow branches winding paths as voices he connected up from the telephone exchange in Exchequer Street. It must have pleased him, conversations flying on witcheries of wire.

That tree, symbol for wisdom, Salix (he knew its Latin name) long gone. Gone too Virginia House. Replaced by shape shifting landscape, apartment blocks like totem poles. A Luas Line snakes its way to a city of many tongues.

We are different yet the same since he was here.

Dublin Mountains tower still behind our houses, thrushes sing with wrens in Gleann na Smól, winds sweep away winter’s ghosts, moon and stars sickle our skies, willow roots, like language, go deep.