Poem of the Week: Big Bright Moon (1972)

An icy evening in winter, my brother and I danced
(ceilí mostly) in Rathcabbin. Music over, outside
the hall, our breaths ballooned around us. No lift,
but still enough petrol in our teenage bodies

to walk towards Birr. Along a road dark as an oil
slick, nothing to guide us but moon. Big and bright.
We chatted about who danced with who. What
might have been but wasn’t. My brother spoke
of a girl he regretted not asking out for a jive. She left
on another’s arm. Also discussed: who went outside
for a court; flushed cheeks a sure giveaway.

Not one car passed us on that five mile journey.
Wild birds skittered from hedgerows. Farm dogs
barked. A ways off, alert to our passing all the same.
I fell into a ditch but my brother yanked me out.
As if I was a calf being pulled from a cow. Thin
shoes ruined, tights laddered, knees blistered;
I began to feel cold. My brother gave me his jacket.
Daylight was breaking when we arrived
into a town not long woken from sleep; worried
parents too relieved to be angry.

Decades pass. Memory retrieves what’s worth keeping.
When my brother got sick, he tried every which way
to hold onto the dance. There were no more remissions.
No more trials. In the end, he made it home safe.
At his back, the same moon. So big and so bright.

Eileen Casey is a recipient of The Oliver Goldsmith International Award, The Hanna Grealy Prize and a Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship. Bog Treasure (Arlen House) is her sixth collection, in collaboration with Canadian Artist/Poet Jeanne Cannizzo. She is currently working on ‘River Songs’, (featuring rivers of the Irish Midlands).