Cathal Lannin ................Poems and Short Stories
The Call Of
The Sea
The blue sea
was rough,
But its anger was comforting all the same.
The streaking obliterated as it collided with the rocks,
Its wildness and power brought freedom to mind.
The comfort
came from knowing he was not out there himself, toiling and battling,
But still somewhere deep within him, he missed it,
The sea is like a disease if it gets in your soul,
And there’s a gentle calm to be gained from gazing upon it, however
angry.
The Sea
A mighty mysterious wonder that answers to no one.
She has many moods and only a fool would take her on in full combat.
From the dark and demon north to the calm and crystal clear Caribbean,
Where still it seems at any moment, she might unleash her wrath.
Never particular in where or when,
To take a tithe of life and goods.
Every traveller may pay his price.
In which you can see instilled in men’s minds and faces.
But her soft and gentle side may also often be seen, by children, swimmers
and surfers alike,
And her moodiness reflects in the way we treat her,
Selfishly and without respect.
She must yield an invaluable harvest to the Earth,
Yet she gets no payment.
All she asks is to be pampered and not taken for granted.
Like a true lady to be left to wheel, wash and wander,
Among weed, coral and fish.
We have much to learn about this lady they call the sea,
And mourn the loss of the tales of the souls of Cape Horn
Mathematical Memories
The very thought
of maths to this day fills me with dread,
Why was I the only one left totally devoid of this ability,
My mother, a teacher, my brother and sister straight A’s, everyone
but me,
Those nights mum stood over me for an hour with a make-believe axe.
The panic I
felt in exams time and time again,
Even with both a good teacher and my mum stood over me,
I struggled through each and every exam till the very end,
I came to the conclusion that my talents lay elsewhere.
Thoughts Of Xmas 89-90
Everything
affects each other,
Love is true Betty blue,
Lazy writers can still remember their wackiness,
They can see it in their laundry,
I’ve never done so much of it in my life,
The song remains the same.
The Boathook
It was about
the time I had finished my four-year stint working in Dublin. It took a
while but I had managed to get a similar job fitting toilet cubicles based
in Ballincollig. I was happy to be back in Cork, even though getting home
from work involved two buses, one from Ballincollig into town and the other
from Cork to Myrtleville. This could be frustrating at times, especially
when your bus would be just pulling in and you could see the back of the
other one, just pulling away.
I can remember one particular evening when, having narrowly missed the quarter
past six, I was waiting for the half seven. Finally, at quarter past eight,
the bus pulled up. Already half irate, I proffered a fairly tattered fiver
to the bus driver. The driver eyed up the fiver dubiously and said, “I’m
not taking that fiver. Look at the state of it! I’ll end up getting
stuck with that myself.” “Come here you,” I said, “I
don’t work in the mint and, what’s more, you’re thirty
eight bloody minutes late. You either take that or I’ll report you
to your superiors. The bus driver backed down, explained he was late due
to traffic, and gave me my ticket. I sat down, relieved to be out of the
public scrutiny of everyone on the bus and began to calm down.
That occasion was only to set the scene and put you in the picture for the
main event of the story. This time I was already seated on the bus, just
waiting for it to pull off, when two Frenchmen and a girl approached the
bus with a sixteen foot boathook. I said to myself, “This is going
to be good!”
The driver already had steam coming out of his ears, and he said, “You’re
not getting on here with that. If someone slipped and hurt themselves, CIE
could be sued and I could lose my job.” The three French people looked
at each other and headed off with the boathook. I have a natural inclination
to lean towards the underdog and had already been thinking of the strains
of Oceania and how Ireland was becoming full of ridiculous rules and was
beginning to resemble a police state. Also, being from Crosshaven, I knew
that they’d have got the boathook from Union Chandlery and, barring
hiring a sixteen foot truck, there was no other way of getting the boathook
back to whichever boat they were on at whatever Marina.
I was daydreaming away to myself, when the three frogs, complete with boathook
and inspector in tow, returned. The inspector got on and had a calm word
in the driver’s ear, while the others waited at the door. Then, under
the supervision of the inspector, the boathook was safely stowed away being
the seats, along the length of the bus. The French people paid their fares
and sat down, the inspector said “Good luck,” and we were off.
I thought to myself on the way down, of the stubborn, combative nature of
the French. How their refusal to give in must have helped their resistance
while occupied during the war and how Irish people sometimes seem to me
to be a little on the passive side and a little to quick to give in, knowing
our own past. As they got off the bus with their boathook, it came to me
that the small things in life are worth fighting for and each little victory
has its own value in the greater scheme of life.
Hard Decisions Made Easy
He felt a strange
comfort snuggled up in the duvet with the wind howling outside and rain
lashing against the windowpane. The bad weather signified that there would
be no fishing today. That sound of the bell that sent two thousand volts
up his spine and put the fear of God into him.
He had gotten into fishing, basically because he had never known exactly
what he wanted to do. At the start, working out in the air in all weathers
had appealed to him and added a sense of danger. In the beginning the danger
had excited him and seemed to instill a sense of adventure in him. Having
his mate Billy working with him lightened the load of work. Also, Billy’s
sharp wit and lively sense of humour made the day pass more quickly. Now
though, on his own, without the icebreaker of Billy, his boss Kevin was
more intimidating, the day seemed longer and the danger plain dangerous.
His boss Kevin had never wanted to do anything else but fishing, even with
seven honours in his Leaving. He could have done anything he’d wanted
to but his mind was made up from the start. Kevin was blessed with a special
dedication that carries one a long way. He was now beginning to understand
that he did not have the same vocation as Kevin, who also had the added
spur of being the boat owner.
Sometimes receiving his wages perked him up and kept him going but there
was the memory of starting out and the weeks and months of working for nothing.
In particular one occasion sprung to mind, when to compound a long and frustrating
day’s work rubberising pots, he had been bitten by a dog on the way
home. Just as he crested the hill by Templebreedy, he had been wondering
why on earth he was putting all this effort in for no return when, suddenly,
with no warning, a beagle came out of nowhere and bit him on the leg.
He had always seen this job, or any other for that matter, as a means to
an end. Now though it was becoming apparent to him that fishing was encroaching
on his freedom more and more. It was actually getting to a point where it
seemed like that the job owned him and not the other way around. There were
also occasions in which he was being forced into skullduggery, which he
couldn’t describe here. The kind of tit for tat turf wars that can
sometimes become ongoing between certain fishermen battling to make a living
from the same areas. This worried him and played on his mind so much so
that he actually said to his boss, “I could be out minding my own
business, have a quiet pint and land up with a knife in my back.”
There was also the time when, saving up velvet crabs to get a good price
for Christmas, disaster struck. The crabs had been submerged in the water
in six or seven keeps tied to the marina so they would remain alive, when
a very bad storm blowing from the northwest shook the crabs so much that
half of them died. No alone did he have to put up with the loss of money
three weeks before Christmas but they had to pick through every single crab,
leaving seventeen boxes alive out of forty-two.
At times it seemed like one thing after another. There were too many things
that could go wrong, bad weather, the boat being broken down and all this
while battling the danger to stay alive. He had also ended up in the water
on two separate occasions after accidents. There always is, though, a straw
that breaks the camel’s back. One day, while hauling a lobster pot,
he came face to face with a dead sea otter who had gone into the pot after
the bait and gotten trapped. Being a sensitive chap and a nature lover,
the look on the otter’s face was more than he could take. He didn’t
leave there and then, causing a big scene, he just couldn’t face it
any more. The days he was absent just mounted up until one day he was handed
a package by the boss. As he opened the package he knew what it contained;
his oilskins and a little piece of paper with P45 written on it. The sense
of relief was all embracing.