Short Fiction
Poetry
1 min
Mastheads on Dublin Bay
Eric Machan Howd
Eric Machan Howd
The boats on Dun Laoghaire harbor
sway with the storm, white caps
lick their hulls and bows.
Masts tick-tock in water
like freshly wound metronomes,
keep time for the visitors
who have come to discuss
business and communication,
the art of teaching
deals, contracts, and charters.
The sea spits out three student
sailors during their lesson, their small
vessels left churning in the harbor,
break against black jetty rocks. Media
was there, reporting to the whole island
how the children were safely returned
to their homes, how the west coast
was still flooded from Ophelia.
We walk against the harbor walls
toward James Joyce's tower, rain
soaks us as we search for rocks
and shells. One local identifies
what we had gathered: limpets, small
aquatic snails that adhere themselves
to harbor rocks to feed off algae,
tenacious, like the Irish hold
on this land. Stately Buck Mulligan
descends the tower to greet us
and offers dining suggestions.
He encourages us to re-examine
our choices, our hungers,
our tastes. He sends us forth
to Glasthule to meet three
witches that own a thrift shop
that aids the blind. They pry
into our lives, ask of blood types
and homeland. They give
everyone who visits them
a gift and need to know all
histories. They offer us an empty
box commemorating the sinking
of the Titanic. Shoes, soaked,
ruined, are placed in the box
and left with another store
that gives to those with cancer.
The bird on the conference windowsill
argues loudly as the researcher
presents on adjusting reading levels
to certain audiences, how goldfish
today have a longer attention span
than the average human. The grey
skies lighten for a double rainbow
and for one moment, the harbor
settles down, the music of the masts
slows, and the winds drop their volume
to a low haunting howl
as we leave for America.
Mastheads on Dublin Bay was selected for MSUL’s themed call for work about Water, in coordination with the MSU Broad Art Museum’s fall 2023 exhibition, Flint is Family in Three Acts, featuring the photography of Latoya Ruby Frazier.
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