Leprechaun

Yesterday, the urge to draw. A crude cartoon of a leprechaun on the wall over a bar, and the urge to take its shape. A hand that nearly formed something. Small marks of indecision on lined paper. Moments we do not forget because they might tell the truth if we keep them tender. A message that cannot be deciphered but does not escape. A death throe from long ago. Muscles still alive. The child forgot to write anything down: little more than the hint of one small finger pointing upwards at a forty-five degree angle - up to where the adults are.

A hand that drops a pencil and points for decades 'til it hammers its nail into an eager grave. The uncertain replica of a hat by the margin of a page. A body too scared to shake. Foreign words mean less with age. A tongue vibrates and I stick my pen in. Ink into the heart of things. The spelling didn't matter anyway.

A small child tugging on the coattails of dead Victorians. The Golden Years captured on b/w reels. Laughter rising along a staircase. It is better to lie down when the wind blows. There's fire in the mountains. I have my place in the cold air that is pulled toward combustion. There is closeness and there isn't. We look at the clock and live by a series of assumptions.

A picture-frame, and within it the picture of a small child pointing. The sun casting prolonged shadows into the immortality of the young child's face. Time creases paper; old arguments die hard on the glass inside the frame. Nobody really looks when throwing glances. The child dreams on and on while the colours fade. Knuckles stiff from repetitive motion: ten pound notes piled up and knocked down. Bellies curved with good times and forgetting: words learnt at the age of sixteen: practice makes perfect again and again.

And one crude leprechaun is all it took; for one split second of so much of everything. On my page lay a hat of questionable proportions, and a few words of gaelic; useless and beautiful; something to cling to; the shapes of letters: