THE HARMATTAN by Padraig Rooney

A Harmattan is a West African trade wind picking up fine dust particles on its passage over the desert; meaning ‘tears your breath apart’.

The lawn was frosted.
Some rabbit or hare
had marched across it
and printed there

his early morse,
gone by noon.
A stabled horse
sent a plume

of morning breath
across the canal.
News of a death -
my brother Cathal

killed at seventeen,
so long ago
I believed in heaven.
Frost or snow?

I laid my hand
on a cold bonnet
and felt that sand
had landed on it,

lifted overnight
by prevailing wind.
Could that be right?
Had I lost my mind?

A northern frost
the night he died
and wind-borne dust
filming the car red?

It little matters
at this distance.
Time scatters
details in a dance

of grief and art.
A whirlwind air
descends to tear
your breath apart.

                          -- originally published in Wales Arts Review