The Mary Deare

We sailed her on a faulty Honda motor,
our lifejackets fastened with cable,
wishing for mackerel with a feather-hook
while Dad niggled her engine,
skeins of line knotting at our feet.

The modified trailer never fit her right,
the winch crying under her weight
on the slipway, her frazzled motor coughing out –
once she deserted us to a giddy limbo of oars,
her keel listing on an angry susurrus of foam

until a belt of curses lit her motor
and she wheezed into the hug of a jetty;
after that, we never sailed her again,
but still Dad planed and re-planed her lumber,
oiled and varnished her wreath of oak.

Grieving her stilts of iron, he gave her up at last
to the neighbour who scuttled her
in the nook of a yard, who made of her
a vessel of rain, a mirror of cloud.

Jeremy Haworth is a Dublin-born poet who lives in rural Laois. He takes his words wherever he goes, and enjoys sharing his poems in varied settings — theatres, pubs, parks, prisons, yurts, churches, kitchens, and living rooms. He was the recipient of the Cúirt New Writing Prize 2019 and is a member of the Carlow Writers Co-Op.

Read more of Jeremy here.