The Glen is heavenly in this perfect late spring day, and we have a brand new yellow bench grown overnight and the colour of furze say friends of the Glen. A couple is sampling it as I pass – it is oddly facing towards the perimeter of the park, in the direction of the newly planted trees and with its back to the football pitch, surprising, but actually true to the form of all Irish towns – facing the main thoroughfare. I head East and pass the construction site for bench no 2. I venture on to see once more the walls of P and I begin to soften, it’s beginning to be possible they have a new and different charm now, gate posts more obviously pillars, and tentatively chiming with the anemones. The hemlock is growing strong at the bole of the witch’s Willow and cow parsley there too, just to confuse, along with the clumps of sedge and a small chorus of limes it makes for quite a throng. I curve around the bayou admiring its swampy green and still water as always with its swamp trees and flooded harp strings.
And on to the corner of the Engineer’s house and the blossom of the apple I know now to be still holding on since the days of the orchard, though barely, as the tree has tumbled or been wrenched, the branch is almost severed and it still manages an abundance of pink and white blossom. Up the hill to the oak and the buds are lit up and opening into the warm sky, no galls this year… up along the path walking in that curious bubble which is the Glen river valley, a place so far away from the roads and the city and still in the heart of it and the rose bay willow herb is sprouting up all around and I know now what is coming here and my heart is full. I spy a little oak nestling tiny now below the gorse that makes up a side of what will soon be the fairy arch, and I think of TC and his planting and try and capture the reach of it beneath the sky for him.
I gallop down the tussocks and trip over a peach pit leaving it to settle who knows what will grow here, I am urgent to see the wall of The Hatch that I spied from above…could it really be pink? It’s pink it’s pink and I feel the smile, marshmallow Neapolitan, ( that Beatles’ song hovers …Creme Tangerine..Montelimar…) and I gather now that P the wall has a fine sense of humour, and this gesture has sprung mine back into action with aplomb, it has gone pink at the ends and almost green on the lengths… how delightful it makes me sing first with a hint of irony but soon I’m enjoying the hell out of it and sing
I go back along whistling to the birds and up home passed the empty, brand new yellow bench.