We found the fried cod
in the glovebox two days later.
It was that kind of night

and my first in the country.
It was wretched but I 
remember it fondly.

A dead man in Galway,
men dressed as nuns
and swans at the mouth

of the Corrib, and rain.
Then the few wintering souls
of Inis Mor, and its cows 

lovely, soft-eyed and ambling.
And waking, myself, in a chair
to a stiff-backed dawning

and the refrain of the innkeeper, 
born and raised and lived within
a stone’s throw of Blarney 

but limiting his eloquence to
Isn’t it grand? Isn’t it grand?
As a chicken strutted by

self-righteous as the morning.