Gethin M. Jones is 34 years old, living in North Wales, UK, now a single dad of the children mentioned in the poem. Currently studying a degree in Writing and English, and just beggining to get my claws into the form of the novel. Most notable thing ever done: sang to the queen at the age of ten in a cathedral choir!
The Black Cockerel (January 20, 2010. Issue 13.)
He was lying along three chairs in the Accident and Emergency waiting room. Though the strip lights buzzed and News 24 droned in his fore-brain, he was not all there. Two strangers occupied the room with him, all in mutual ignorance, all alone in their private heartaches
He checked her. She slept.
He didn’t want to think - how she’d just found out she was pregnant - how they didn’t have enough money for the taxi home - how they had to wait five hours for the first bus of the day. He didn’t know what to think. He went outside, through double sliding doors, under the guise of wanting a cigarette, but really in search of some silence to order his scrambled brain.
He was going to be a father.
That was as far as his thoughts got before they stalled.
He hunched in the cold, his breath as white as the smoke he exhaled. He stared out at well lit carparks, the one-way system and the pay meters. It was cold enough for snow, and a chilled wind licked around his collar. An expressway roared distantly. There was no silence here, just humming hospital fans in false darkness.
He went back to his chairs, ignoring the newcomers, three women, all sitting in stunned, teary silence. He tried to sleep.
He was spoilt by those few years in the town. Once he was moved to the farm, certain things couldn’t be changed. His Nain saw this, and understood an absolute where his Taid could never admit one. So he was taken out to the fields, with cap, crook and dogs, into the undulating movement of uphills and downhills. This held his attention for a while, especially the trips to the furthest fields in the little red tractor, where he sat on a bale of hay in the box in the back.
But the softness was still there, and was brought to a head by Playschool. The Forestry-framed hilltops, sacks of feed and blocks of salt-lick couldn’t compete with the wonders of the square window and Big Ted and Little Ted. Taid insisted on leaving straight after breakfast, but Playschool started at ten. He cried, Nain intervened, and Taid stomped out alone.
Three days later, once Playschool was finished, he marched out by himself, under the guise of going to meet Taid at the cattleshed, but knowing that he would not. He played with the dogs, tried to call the woodshed home, and explored until Nain called him in.
Soon he was allowed to wander further, beyond the dry-stone walls around the house. He gravitated to the farm buildings, the barn with its bales, and to the duckless pond where he caught newts. He learnt the secret corners of the farm, which only one of his size could appreciate.
Taid became aware of his wanderlust, and saw a new way of hardening him up. He was given tasks to perform, helping to feed the chickens and dogs every morning. He was given a Border Collie pup to care for, and a wax cap like Taid’s, with an identical sprig of mountain heather. He was every inch the little farmer.
School started, and the farm became a weekend paradise. The Christmas snows arrived, and lambing season started. He fed the lambs with no mummies, but was deemed to small to walk the fields on the lambing watch. The snows became deeper, and he was made housebound. School was reached by Taid’s Landrover Defender, and all his free time was spent by the fire, watching telly. He had a non-speaking part in the nativity play in the village chapel, as the third King, which he chickened out of at the last moment.
For Christmas he got a bright red romper suit and a red plastic sledge. He was dimly aware of his mothers concern, and his Taid’s insistence that he would stick out for miles around. All other gifts paled in comparison. He wandered out all Christmas day, in fields so still and frozen it felt like the world had stopped turning, and he was all alone. He tramped the long road to the black gaping maw of the Forestry under a ice blue sky, and turned home as thunderheads rolled into sight. He felt like he would remember that day for the rest of your life.
He found he wanted to be an explorer. Not a farmer.
One day, not long after his birthday, Taid called him outside into the snow, because he wanted some help.
‘We’re going to catch tomorrow’s dinner,’ he said, pointing at the black cockerel strutting amid its harem on the scrapes and ash pile. ‘You stay here, and I’ll go around the other side.’
He went slowly to the other side of the pile. ‘Walk slowly now,’ he called. ‘Fresh chicken is so nice’.
The wilful death of another creature had never occurred to him, and he stopped still with the weight of it. He was being asked to help kill the bird. He had seen the sprung mousetraps under the sink, the geese hanging in the pantry, but had never killed anything. He’d given the orphan lambs names.
He began to cry.
The cockerel stalked past him, and despite Taid’s urgent shouts, he would not move. Finally giving up, Taid stalked into the house, and never asked for help again.
Taid died not long after, and the rift was never mended. For the want of a black cockerel, he missed out. He was moved back to the town, and things moved on. Some questions were never answered.
Something woke him. He felt an overlarge hand on his shoulder, and detected the scent of heather. The cobwebs of dreams blew away as he sat up. Instinctively, he looked over to where she lay.
She was still sleeping
He went out again, and the lights in the car park had switched off, and dawn was not far from coming. His thoughts no longer raced, but beat with a measured pace. Calmer. Possibly a little grownup.
The cold reminded him of a day on the farm, in hip-deep snow, the stream frozen over, icicles hanging from the branches of the damson trees, all the way to the ground.
This time, there’d be no black cockerels.
He rolled a cigarette from the dwindling supply of tobacco, and walked to the bus shelter to see when the first one would arrive.
Distant Children (November 20, 2009. Issue 11.)
I will love you at remarkable distances -
Be in your periphery’s orbit,
Guessing wrong footing myself
To the tune of your life.
Seemingly half-there, fogged ghostly,
Speech a precious resource, speeding jewels
Spun over wire, over disparity and miles,
To a receiver, and the silences between breaths
To a little room in the garret of your heart.
The outstretched hand will move, grasps and remember.