Having the Ears of a Horse

Place, Listening & the Road of Story

I was born my head facing one way, my body the other. It’s true. An occulted birth. Schooling tried to twist my head the conventional way and failed. I have to conclude at fifty that my head had it right all along. What I’m doing now is an allowing of the body to finally follow its own animal feeling. I am following my gods back home.

I want my shape, not my civility.

I want my nature, not my ornamentation.

When I hear people occasionally bark or cackle or weep,

I hear more of their trueness than any conversation can bring.

I want my naturalness.

I want to think in dream again.

My singing head was born gazing towards Dartmoor, Tintagel, the greening teeth of the Irish Sea, Knocknapeasta mountain and beyond, even Iceland and the sagas that poured from it. But my body was aimed at Thatcher’s Britain, Greater London, M25, Eleven-plus, GCSEs. To try and force my mind in that direction was a savage waste for both myself and everyone else. Decades later I would spit in a bottle and strange words would come back to me, months later, messages in a bottle.

Gaillimhe

Maigh Eo

Ciarraí

Galway, Mayo, Kerry. Turns out my lived history is mainly Devon in the far west of Britain, but much of the blood-fuse is far west of Ireland. That pugnacious and mystical spot of turf and dream facing off the North Atlantic squall. The blood has it. I am a far wandered son and I was not sorry to receive the news. It seems likely the migration across the waters would have been a crawl, stagger and creep away from the wracking and ungodly devastation of the potato famine.

Fifty is not the age of a child. Not the age of someone telling you what you should be doing, what you should be looking at. I want to heal and have the adventure. I am a man now, and this is what I elect to do with my time.

So my sweet old body,

Easy now, deepen into yourself.

Shift round with me, and take in

The gaze I was always offering you.