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The Whistle
In Tralee looking for a
Clarke tin whistle key of C,
found one in a five & dime
under a pile of women's lingeree
next to a bin of oranges for god sake.
I had a wooden whistle
but it wooden whistle
so I got a tin whistle
and now I tin whistle.
Mid-day and all the shops
shut down on the street.
Taking their nooning,
girls on one side, boys on the other,
pointing at each other,
the girls lovely white legs.
The shawlies are out with the keening.
A hearse heads up the High
and they wail O it's poor Tommy Teague,
he's dead and gone O dear now.
Brakes squeal, the door of the wagon
slams open sending the casket to the street.
O he's kilt, he's kilt now, they cry.
A herd of pigs rollick
down the middle of the High Street,
thirty or more, going lord knows where,
butcher, or to a sty out in the country
which isn't far away.
A cattle truck lumbers by,
and at the top of the street
the gate drops and a little calf stumbles out,
trots after the pigs.
Liam was telling about it at the Garter,
says You should have seed what I just seed,
up here on the High Street,
the hasp let go on the back gate of Carney's
and this poor little bullock
fell out on his hands and knees,
right on his hands and knees.
© 2002, Dudley Laufman
A poet can survive everything but a misprint.
~Oscar Wilde
Punctuation was not invented until the 1500's.
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