DRAWING FROM THE WELL

In a pub that fills on Brigit’s day
a lone whistle gives a last gasp
and a drunk singer stands berated.
We lift the latch, and his song veers off its stave
as we enter a room of shifting looks and feet
and take our place at the table by the fire.

My friend draws back the bow
of the dead man’s fiddle
hung silent on the wall ten years
and follows the whistle’s lead.
The woman of the house
conducts her unruly clients,
and memories of a brother’s music
work a saint’s charm on arthritic fingers.

Like Brigit’s cloak the tunes unfurl,
seamless, unchecked, spilling from bar to street
round and round the statue to hover over offerings
– a bowl of white hyacinths, beads, a Matchbox car –
fanning the candles’ crazed dance in the draught of the well
then skimming over water, upstream,
to wind around the cross.

Dust, raised by each stroke of the fiddler’s bow
sparkles in the sun that warms her shoulder;
our eyes fix on the compelling pendulum
of motes as they settle in slow motion on her hair.
She nods and winds the music down,
drawing the cloak back in
to hang it on a sunbeam,
then hands the fiddle 
back across the bar.