In four brief lines, Sean O’Brien’s poem “Counting the Rain” leaves us slightly anxious, a bit bemused but definitely intrigued. We’ve featured this piece as Poem of the Week previously … but quite honestly, we couldn’t forget it and wanted to revisit it again.
The first line describes straightforward actions – clear, purposeful, easy to…
In four brief lines, Sean O’Brien’s poem “Counting the Rain” leaves us slightly anxious, a bit bemused but definitely intrigued. We’ve featured this piece as Poem of the Week previously … but quite honestly, we couldn’t forget it and wanted to revisit it again.
The first line describes straightforward actions – clear, purposeful, easy to relate to, mundane. Everyone does this when they’re leaving home, whether it’s to run a quick errand or to depart for a longer time away.
The second line introduces a tiny bit of doubt …
“Lock up. Make sure you have”
OK, sometimes we have our wee doubts, even as we go about the most routine of activities. No harm in double checking …
But then, in rapid succession, we’re crisply directed to do something rather odd and …
“Do it properly.”
Oh my. The poem then closes with the bewildering, maybe even ominous
“You won’t be home again.”
What in the world is going on? Should we be amused or a bit alarmed?
At a literary festival reading in 2011, O’Brien commented that this poem was about OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder). Whether or not he was joking, this reference to an anxiety disorder characterized by repetitive behaviours aimed at reducing the cause of unusual stress explains a lot. with the image of someone actually trying to count raindrops, O’Brien has powerfully – but still with a touch of whimsy – captured a mood of very strange distress.
