Francine Rochford: ‘Freshwater Mussels’ and ‘John Murphy’s black bitch’

Freshwater Mussels

Black half-shells edge out of the grey noisome mud or,

Flipped over, show another half to form a ridged whole.

Is it a housing only?  Maybe not scraped clean by the feeding hardhead, but a closed coffin anyway?

Schrodinger’s mussel, both alive and dead.

The ground sucks at the sides and bottom of my boots;

A few times, when I was smaller and my boots awkwardly large—

bought oversize against some distant spurt of growth—

I left behind one or the other

Running to head off a newly calved heifer

Or her gangly spawn,

Then, perched heron-like on a single leg

I would carefully reach my toes back, aiming for the clean-ish centre

Not the caked and rancid coating of cloying, drying mud

That would caulk the weave of my trousers

And follow my steps for the rest of the season

Leaving lines and spots of mud so finely grained

Into the grain of my skin

That a nailbrush alone would remove it.

Velesunio ambiguous, like a hard, deflated football,

Lies in the mud’s embrace,

Or moves about, tonguing the wet ground

Sucking on the sucking swamp water

Letting it wash over her, stain her

Insides and out;

Eating and drinking and breathing the odoriferous water,

Keeping the worst and expelling the fresh, unwanted rest.

Francine Rochford

John Murphy’s black bitch

John Murphy’s black bitch was skittled today;

Gazing after the tanker

she’d hunted down the drive and worried around the corner

skipping and curving neatly between the corners and culverts

nipping and scowling at the great black-and-silver lures

pitting her spare quick body against the monstrous roaring behemoth.

And winning; every time—

twisting and cavorting between the air and the ground

beating down the imagined prey

unpalatable, bilious with gas and choked with the dust of a thousand graded roads

but still worth the chase.

She doesn’t concede, never concedes—

                just calls off the pursuit;

And stands, heroic in the gaze of the sun

Ears pricked, tongue lolled in insolent pant, tail still celebrating;

Holding the field, quivering with victory,

Invisible in the tanker’s wake.

Francine Rochford