Evenings In Cromane

EVENINGS IN CROMANE / Robert Cording On our road heavy-uddered cows lined up like pilgrims in hopes of lightening their burdens. In the yards: chickens, donkeys, some goats, a small garden. It might have been a world out of the Georgics—the rich green fields, the animals, the gardens—though no one had enough cows for a living and the gardens were mostly cabbages. The luckiest men worked in a German chemical plant. The others fished, did odd jobs, tended some cows, were on the dole. We'd walk the seawall, looking out at Dingle Bay, sky still fighting to stay blue, though light declined, and clouds gathered for the hundreth time. The sea would be grey and blue, vivid and muted. Rain wouldn't fall, but mist, like eyes full of tears that are kept back with a laugh. A smoky mist above the houses, a green mist above the fields. Bright yellows of gorse, dark reds of fuchsia. On the beach silhouettes of men would haul up their boats; bent over, they seemed darkened by some grief. Oystercatchers flew off— not far, but far enough to remind that nature and human nature are never quite aligned. Sometimes we'd see a curlew, priest of water, stirring the shallows with its long, downturned beak. We'd hope it would stay and wouldn't leave us with its call— wistful, thin, a cry that wandered like a ghost long after in the resonant air. 252 · The Missouri Review ...