Connemara Whispers

My mother's last wish on a bed at Mass General was to go to Ireland.

"You've roamed the workd and never gone to your native land. I want you to go out there after im done and meet a woman like your sisters, cousins, or aunts."

And like that I was obliged to heed my mother's wish, even though its incestuous nature scared the bejus from my marrow. After her passing in 1997 an English arranged an autumn rental of a cottage west of Galway from Lord Robert Guinness. A night in Dublin with my landlord at the Shelburne. In the morning a train ride to Galway. A night of drink. Next dawn a bus the Cliften and a taxi to a cow town between the Seven Pins of tge the Atlantic Ocean. A small town. Not a woman in Ballyconeeley. Just cows and sheep roaming the boglands, so I drank Guinness at Keough's with a handful of sad cow farmers and my good friend Ty Spaulding. In the haunted schoolhouse wandering the bogs accompanied by the whispers of Europe washed into the Atlantic by a westerly wind. Aah, true Ireland, that.