Older now looking back on my younger self
in car five miles out of Waterford city
on a country road dark with rain and night that
had come at 2PM.
The driver and I sharing Irish-English banter.
Talking about Leprechauns and the Blarney stone,
the changing of the guard and Blackpool tower.
And then, out of the gloom, at the side of the road ,
an old woman stood, hunched
under a headscarf dripping rain. “And would you
look at that”, the driver said,
“it’s the virgin Mary herself,” and what I wondered
was the virgin Mary doing out here in the ass end of nowhere?
“Just look city boy, and remember this moment forever,
the virgin mother on a road in county Waterford.”
He brought the car to a stop beside her, wound down the window
and asked if she would like a lift.
She climbed in the back, a papier mache body smelling of
wet earth and something more pungent,
less elemental than the rain. “Is it you yourself virgin mother?”
“It’s me myself right enough Patrick,” she replied.
He told her all about me and how lucky I was to be chosen
for this encounter with the blessed Mary.
We drove on for five minutes and around a bend in the road
a shack appeared.”Here we now mother,” he said, “get yourself
inside out of the rain. Say thanks now city boy, to the blessed Mary.”
As she opened the door I said, “goodbye virgin Mary.”
She turned back towards me and said, “virgin Mary is it indeed?
Well city boy I can tell you, I’ve had more pricks than you’ve had
pints of the black stuff and my fecking name is Bernadette!”
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Dennis Moriarty was born in London, England and now lives in Wales. Married with five grown up offspring Dennis likes walking the dog in the mountains, reading and writing.
In 2017 he won the Blackwater poetry competition and went to county Cork in Ireland to read his work at the international poetry festival. Dennis has had poems featured in many publications including Blue nib, Our poetry archive, Setu bilingual, The passage between and others.
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