THE NUNS’ WALL

THE NUNS’ WALL

THE NUNS’ WALL

At night, when I bolted up the punishing
steepness of Richmond Hill, there was
the wall, and a line of heads along the top –
nuns in the moonlight. If they weren’t 
ghosts, how did they get up there? 
Did they drag ladders from the convent 
at midnight, creaky bodies in full habit 
clambering up the wobbly rungs? 
I had paid my dues for robbing the grapes! 
Fecky Murphy led us over the wall between 
the handball alley and their greenhouse. 
Big, blue grapes, huge bunches of them that 
I sold for a penny a throw on the street. 
They had us up in court for the damage 
and the shortfall in communion wine 
that winter, but I got off with a warning.
The father didn’t let me off though,
hauling me out of the bed at five to ride
in the side-cart with the drover to our
rented field beyond the town, from where
we would drive the cattle along the road
into the mart. And then the nuns’ wall.
Were they mad, or just fond of a drop, 
those beaming, gap-toothed faces?