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DeborahTEMPLETON |
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Deborah Templeton lives on the north coast of Ireland, and works across page, stage and audio. Her work includes an audio installation for a lighthouse, a contemplative poetry trail for woodlands, and a forest performance written in the Panamanian jungle. She is the author of Water's Edge, published by Confingo as an illustrated edition with radiophonic download in 2023.
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Dustboy
Scrub and pale and rough my garden. I am out now, soft-soled on the sift of it. Away and get some air, there's a good boy. Our yard all scrubble and dust. Bone dry, dries a bone, a wee bit breeze. We could use some weather. Bright my eyes. Sun hot on my top. Scaldy now. I put my hand, I feel the buzz of it. Scruffed and shorn, no curls. I dig a little hole with my toe in the scuff dirt. Stubble head. Stubble ground. I make dust clouds in the sunshout, in the summer still. All hush and shush. I am a slow swirl, a dust whirl, wee tatterscrap. Here is someone now. Wide foot, black jacket, peak face beaking in the gravel sand, in the sand soil, in the dust scuff. He is a little man in a big coat. He sees me with his swirly bead eye. He is a man what come in a black car that time and that was when. That was then. He is gone little but I know him by his long black, his swagger back, how here he comes web-foot, claw toe, to scratch in my soil. I watch, I whisper, I squint my eyes at the little man pulling a worm in his peaky beck. In the before, he was the crow flown into the now of that day, and his wings, his beak, his craw call all - that's what made the before and made the after and made me the tatterscrap left dust scuffing. Here comes my Pa, my Da. All tall, long, long. Come see me. His face up high in the sky brights. Spindle legs. He comes down on his hunkers, folds up like a paper man. Brings me in, wraps me up in him. I smell his warm, his tobacco sharps. I itch my nose. Big hand heavy on my head, pulls me in. He puts out the sun and we are a dark hug, and I stand stockstill in my stocking feet. I am a stickboy, shoulderbones. Poor Pappy makes a snivel sound, a shudder shake. Then he is up and I am up and out and into fresh and bright and sun spinning on stones. He wipes his eyes. He cleans my face with his fingers. Wet cheeks and smudgy. And that is when. What see we on the lane. A mangly dog, all skin bones. Would you look, Pappy say, Who come get you? And he makes a whistle in his teeth and she come lollop. Flop ear, sticky fur, cry eyes. My black crow, he gone high in the hawthorn tree. |
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These texts are published with the kind authorization of the author.
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