THE POT BELLIED STOVE The bar looks cleaner, old tobacco-ed Anaglypta. Cheeks tingling from our river walk we burrow into shabby leatherette. Unsure tentacles of my memory embrace the pot bellied stove where long ago my father sat cameo'd. I dangled fat little legs and sucked red lemonade through a straw; warm cattle smells dovetailed the shouting, heavy treads of Wicklow fair day farmers who called for pints and knocked the dottle from their pipes. He liked to be among them, yet never belonged, content with small daughter, his drink dark and creamy as our full words. We gloat, as lovers do, over the treasures of our walk; stone skimming at a mirrored stretch; magic crystals dancing on a sunlit fern; a heron's flight where Avonmore cavorts around time-smoothed rocks; I introduce you to my old pot bellied friend, redundant but in pride of place, a local artifact, a cast iron proof I did not dream that set-in-amber afternoon. -- Eithne Cavanagh, who spent her formative years in Co. Wicklow.