Playing the Pipes

This morning in Dingle, the clouds bellied down over the mountains and broke into grey, white, and blue. Winds flagged through the palm trees that the man from the "Big House" brought back to the bay long ago. Up Greene Street, the school kids in their dark uniforms gather on the sidewalk by the Spar store. Long ago, this was a Spanish town, east of the Blasket Islands and west of Connor Pass. The harbor is full of sails. The piper sits in his little shop on the rounding road, selling penny whistles, telling anyone who will listen how many ways there are to vary the sound, how much there is to think of all at once.