Ivan Dobnik - Vilenica

Ringing in Sick to go Mermaid Hunting
Sarah Clancy · 411
Once when I wasn’t, I called in sick for the evening shift
and went instead to meet you at Raftery’s in Kilcolgan,
we left your car there and I drove south- west down
the summer solstice evening, hitting for the coast.
We squinted through sunglasses at Ballinderreen and Kinvara
but didn’t stop, turned for Fanore at Ballyvaughan, you leaning back
feet on the dash singing along to the Indigo girls and Johnny Cash,
and asking me where we were going, messing about, I wouldn’t say,
I just told you -‘on a day like this, trust me, it’ll all work out-
we’re going mermaid hunting and the signs are good, for catching’.
There were no mermaids though, at the pier before Black Head
just one dolphin doing her bit for inter-special integrationshe
came in waist-deep to meet us and we were charmed,
and drenched. From behind wet hair you asked me how I’d known
and in my stupid humour I said ‘oh you know I had my people
call hers -that’s how it goes, this was arranged for your pleasure dear’.
So you pushed me backwards off the pier then jumped yourself
and our dolphin circled as if she got the joke,
spearing herself four feet skywards above our heads
then vanishing beneath. Us two fools, we swam through seaweed,
feeling elemental and amateur ‘you’re half fish,’ you said,
and me; ‘yea but I’ve caught you this time’
In Lenane’s at dusk we had chowder, and a pint
I sat with salty skin and hair and when you joined
the jobs-worth band to sing ‘The Dimming of the Day’
for me, you made every hair on every sunburned neck there stand.
You slept then as I drove back but I woke you in Kilcolgan
to send you down the Craughwell road, Me? I hit for home
but parked instead at White Strand beach, on the longest evening
of the year, too full of everything to go inside just then.