ANDREA CORR OF THE CORRS PLAYING PENNYWHISTLE digital manipulation by Michal Forbus CHANCE MEETING BY MICHAEL FORBUS I woke way before dawn today and again my heart was telling me lies. Before I had my tea my head begain to tell me how old I was approaching. The sadness washed over me like the Scottish rain in the Highlands. I had been in a sad state of solitude for half my life and it looked like the other half was heading that way. I had my stone house I had built with a sturdy farm horse. Pulled the stones from the garden and as always planted the flowers first. I always thought of blooms as if they were food for the eyes. I needed to take a long walk to leave this sadness in the bog. I took the rock fence route, the stones I had cleared from the garden and built the house, never called a home, and the long fence to keep my horses in. My setters settled into a lope across the field smelling every spot and pointing at a bird once in a while. I began to sing to my pups an old Gaelic song my grandfather taught me. He died alone, his wife gone way before him and I watched him die a little each day as I felt like I was doing now. As I came up the hill, I begin to hear a penny whistle, so sweetly playing. It was an old traditional song, so beautiful with a melancholy timbre. I saw no one playing until I got half way up the meadow by the stone fence and I realized that the sound was on the other side of the fence. I jumped the fence and the dark haired lass jumped higher then I had jumped the fence. She was frightened. The quietness took over and she couldn't quite look at me in the eyes. I asked her for her name and the woman with hair of the darkest night and light in her starry eyes was like beams on the shore bringing the fishing boats home. She told me Claire, like County Clare in Ireland but with an I. She finally began to talk and she could not stop. Her family had been lost to consumption and she was the only survivor. Everday, she told me she came up the meadow and played the whistle to draw a handsome young man who shaved just for himself in the morning and always wore clean clothes to walk. An old habit of mine. I had not been drinking the stout for so long my eyes had taken on the blue of spring sky and hers were dark and seductive. She told me that her Father said with his last breath, that whomever answered the whistle was to be her Husband. I was astounded at first at her being so forward. Then I realized that I was there wishing for the same prayer to be answered. My nightly prayer. Lord, please don't let me die alone. Please bring music back to my house and turn it into a home with the peat burning in the fireplace and a potful of dinner waiting for me to return from my chores. Into the arms of one who saw me as young and couldn't take her eyes off my blue eyes as she said it was as if she couldn't see the sky any longer not to see my eyes. And when I looked into her dark eyes, it was a starry night and beams floated gently across the room and tugged at my heart. So I say to you now that I have begun to become young again, always listen for the music, always smell for the lavender, always look deep into her eyes and when you kiss your beloved, do it with all the passion you plant her flowers with or clear the garden of stone. Today, after working hard all day with the horses, I saw her watching me from the doorway and I saw the yearning in her eyes from 50 rods away. She saw me as I felt, young and strong and immortal. I saw her as the Gaelic angel that she is, and as tired as I was. I ran home to have her blessed wings around me. WRITTEN BY MICHAEL FORBUS copyright by Miguel