Brian Dion

Finding the Words

Seanchan called a great convocation and summoned the Fili and poets of all levels to reconstruct the Tain Bo Cualnge... but the poets were not able... The next morning Seanchan and his son departed, riding south…. *

I.
Seanchan

“Search about the clover, boy-o,
poke about the furze and grass.
Snap the stalks of autumn yarrow,
read their seeds before they pass.

Hear the shivered sprigs of hazel
plucked by harping strokes of wind;
glean that song if you are able.
Tales are trebled by the land.

Cut the grain from fields of Honor,
bid the miller ‘Sift the grist.’
Roam the bogs and cleave the vapor.
Stories ride the morning mist.

Bleed the stag on Christian parchment
stolen from the Abbot’s tin.
Stain that Psalter’s golden raiment
red with verses praising Men.”


“I know where we will find the tale,” said Seanchan to his son.
“We must go to Eanloch where Feargus mac Roich is buried”*

II
Muirghein

“We stood in chafing briar-weed
and cotton-grass. I must admit,
I thought the codger short on wit;
a fool begs favors of the dead.

But when a voice began to rise
from rickled bones and marrow, sere
with thirst for one distilling ear,
my father grew before my eyes.

The verses bloomed like alder leaves
and I began to understand
that death can never be the end
as long as poems can rise from graves.

I watched him swallow braided chords
and wondered who, if anyone,
will hear our tale when we have gone
to barrow, buried with our words.”

*The Man of Lore — retold by Tom White in Parabola Volume XVII, #3

Companion Piece

My own father was a man of stories. Generally they would come after I’d made some sort of youthful declaration of intent regarding my future. Most often they were small and seemed inconsequential at first, only gaining weight upon reflection. Some never gained any weight at all. This story falls somewhere in the middle of these two categories and came when, at the sagely age of thirteen, I told him I wanted to make a living as a writer.

On a cold November morning in 1967 my father bounded down the stairs from our third floor apartment and burst into fading darkness. He looked up and saw that fuzzed line of dawn slowly spreading across the East Boston sky. Smiling as he jingled a pocketful of change, he turned and quickly walked toward the corner of Falcon and Maverick streets to wait for the bus.

When the bus squealed to a stop he raced up its steps, dropped a dime into the fare box and slid onto a window seat. He was still smiling and he had every reason to smile. He was on his way to a job interview at the Quincy shipyard. It had been a lean six months since he was discharged from service and this chance was even more than he’d hoped for. His wife could quit her job at the pharmacy and look after his two-year-old son. A welder’s wages would pay for the life his family deserved. He looked around the bus at the yawning passengers coming alive with the morning sun and chuckled as a thought struck him. He could even buy a car!

When the bus came to a stop at Maverick station he raced to the front and down the steps. Standing in front of the station’s entrance, he removed the fistful of change from his pocket and began to separate it into transfers as the other passengers rushed past him to escape the cold. Fifteen cents to State Street. Another fifteen to South station and the Red Line. Andrews Square and another bus to Galivan Boulevard, then one last bus to the shipyard. He dripped the fares back into his pocket and looked at his other hand. More than a dollar in change left over. He descended the stairs of the subway station, two at a time.

At Andrews Square he looked at his watch. He was early. Very early. The next two buses would have him at the shipyard in half an hour and the interview was more than two hours away. He looked across the street and saw the blinking neon of a diner. Sticking his hand into pocket, he jingled the remaining coins and decided to treat himself to breakfast. The diner was filled with conversations and music hissing from a radio on its shelf behind the register. As he took the corner stool at the counter, he paid particular attention to the three men sitting at the booth to his left. They were laughing as they ate, joking about some foreman or supervisor. They wore the coverall uniforms of shipyard welders.

He ordered coffee and the two-egg special, lit a cigarette and waited. He imagined himself in this very diner the following Monday, sitting with the three men in the booth and joking about that same foreman. The pretty, freckled waitress brought him his order as the men in the booth got up to leave and one of them said “ So long, Francine.” Then he looked at my father and joked, “Don’t forget to tip my darlin’.” “Oh, I won’t,” my father said. He watched the men leave and quietly hoped he’d be on their crew.

When he finished eating the bill came and he counted out the eighty-five cents due, then added two quarters to the stack of coins. He was halfway out the door when he suddenly realized he’d made a fatal mistake. Jamming his hand into his pocket he withdrew the remaining change and frantically started to count. His face flushed. He was forty-five cents short. He turned and looked through the diner window at Francine who was gathering up his coins and moving to the register. She caught sight of him and smiled. He spun away and looked at the sidewalk. Not only did he not have enough money to get to the shipyard; he only had enough to get him back to Maverick Station. He’d have to walk home from there. It was then, for the first time that day, that he began to feel the chill of the November morning and raised the collar of his wool jacket. He stood in a sort of limbo for a long time, then crossed the street, passed the waiting Galivan Boulevard bus and disappeared down the subway stairs.

He resurfaced at Maverick Station an hour later and looked toward the direction of home. The wind seemed to have picked up and he thought about the steep hill he’d have to slog up. He was silently cursing himself when he heard his name called out behind him. It was his landlord, Jerry, on his way home from the night shift at the Edison plant.

“Hi Jerry,” my father said.

“What are you doin’ here?” Jerry asked.

“Jerry, would you like to hear a funny story?”

“Sure.”

“Great,” my father said. “But it’ll cost you a dime.”