Carlow Poem #187
I smile to myself, sitting here,
up on Mount Leinster, alone
with Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band.
They play to this audience of one, like a President
or Pope. I imagine their notes breeze-blown,
carried by prevailing winds
to Carlow Town, stopping townsfolk to listen.
‘Is that ‘Born in the U.S.A’ I’m hearing?’
as bass and drum travel through air.
Housewives stop scrubbing the spuds.
Men stop digging the garden. A woman
in a business suit holds a phone from her ear.
The cool vibes of the Big Man,
Clarence Clemons, embodied, alive,
playing saxophone, glinting, suspended,
mid-air – yes, it’s him – proving it all night
in some Badlands of the mind.
His urgent riffs free float over verdant bush
and tree, just outside of Borris, right now.
With Roy Bittan and Danny Fedirici,
trading sharps and flats, on piano and keyboard,
Madison Square Gardens, a Saturday night, Manhattan.
Although I see Fenagh below me,
sitting down here by the Nine Stones,
with the bass thrum of Garry Tallent,
a match for every moo and bleat
of calf and ewe. I sit back,
enjoying The Boss,
his fretwork on ‘Thunder Road’, buoyant
underneath the clouds on this invisible stage,
lighting me up as if I were
part of a moshing crowd,
this free concert, my Central Park,
but it’s Mount Leinster in June. His notes melismatic,
at one with tree, bush, grass, this continuous green.
I am part of it all, plugged in to my headphones.
