Seán Walsh: Pen Pal
Pen Pal
I lived a lot in my head, as a lad.
Like, I was the last in the –
brothers and sisters well ahead of me.
They were stretching their wings
while I was still in the nest –
if – if y’know what I mean…
I didn’t know them. I didn’t really know them.
And my Dad was away a lot and my mother
working the pub during the war years,
trying to make ends meet.
So I – I lived in a world of me own…
Well, like, you won’t believe this
but I used to write letters.
To, to the Little Flower. ‘God’s truth.
Saint Teresa of, of Lisieux.
‘Every few nights. Two, three pages.
With the fountain pen I got for Christmas.
No matter how cold it was in that bedroom.
And I’d leave them folded
under her statue on the tallboy
before getting under the blankets…
God only knows what became of them.
Dumped, I suppose, like a lot of stuff
when the family home was sold off…
And here’s a thing:
whenever now I go into a Church
she’s nearly always there,
to one side or another,
standing with the bunch of roses…
And I wonder does she still remember
the lad that wrote to her
many’s the winter night
all those years ago?..
Sure, how could she forget?!
And I think, maybe, she might
just get me into Heaven
by a side door – when –
when the time comes…
Seán Walsh
When I first posted Pen Pal on my website a distant correspondent responded:
“Exquisite! Your Teresa seems to me more readily accessible than Dante’s Beatrice.
It matters less which one we learnt first than which touches us most within the frame of the poem.
This is a marvelous poem. You don’t have to be Irish to get it. It’s about Love.
– Steve Beeney. (Oklahoma)”
Steve won’t mind me quoting him here. On the contrary…
A lovely example of what Pope Francis would call popular devotion, which he values himself. He is very keen on the statue of the sleeping Saint Joseph which, it is said, he keeps close to his bedside
The wisdom of innocence?
As for myself in the 1950s I was imagining huge trout in the dark pool in the Dodder below Templeogue bridge, and catching them only when I was fast asleep. I was never happier than when fishing the Dodder, usually fruitlessly, in hope. And later when in Wordsworth’s lines near Tintern Abbey I read ‘the sounding cataract haunted me like a passion’ I recognised myself.