The Train to Boyle
° A sideways view of all that is and has been °
The train to Boyle is all cows and canals, the soma tumult of loco motive below a soft flow of slow conversing, broken only by the crackling comms.
Ivy and willow and ailing ash, water reeds and lilies, bursting boisterous berried hawthorn, flanking narrow passage, passing and halting by An Bóthar Buí. Archaic, redundant architecture of unknown former service: gum-grey riveted water tower, then an oddly rolling field.
More cows. No canal, for now. Slow piercing still for Boyle. Puncturing bucolic quietude, no bother to the cows. An ominous darkened underbelly hangs low, dividing frosty from sullen blue, and crows tell the tale of rising air.
Black silage wrap, taut and tight in rows, tucked behind but not within the rounded Kelly barn. A stand of precious ancient oaks adjacent to a proud and humble home. Nature wins at the edges as we wind between productive clans.
A sideways view of all that is and was.
A tiny stone-walled rusted roof, a smaller-still lime-green-and-white caravan lost among the weedy, nettled croft. And again, that slate-grey carving, Royal Canal. Then dark stacks of bog delight old notions and, almost aloud from my mouth, ‘O, look at the turf.’
The other side, sunny and fleeting; mine slow and intimate, revealing, as we approach The Gar. Steeples, domes and satellites, painted lovers and car parks, arrows, lamps and crooked corrugated yards, a digger arm and scaffold, cars heaped for death behind Platform 2. A pigeon and hooded crow flap for scraps and safety. High-banked, fluffy-seeded willowherb.
And back into mother’s womb. Cows and all spoke afore.
Before Thought There is a kind of naming that sits very close to seeing. It comes before explanation, before the mind decides what a thing means or recruits it into a story. Noticing begins simply: roof, bird, water, weather. The world is allowed to remain particular. When travelling alone, this can become a form of company. Ordinarily, when something catches the eye, we point it out to another person. Look at that. In solitude, the gesture turns inward. We point the world out to ourselves. Each small naming becomes a record of encounter: I saw that. It was here, and so was I. To notice what we notice is also to glimpse the shape of our own attention. One object calls while another passes unseen. A broken roof holds us; a whole field disappears. We do not always know why. Nor must we immediately turn it into meaning. Travel by train makes this especially clear. The landscape arrives sideways and is gone before it can be examined. We cannot stop, possess or fully understand it. We can only attend as it passes: all that is and has been, briefly visible. Perhaps observation before interpretation is its own way of knowing. Perhaps it is how the world speaks before we speak for it.