Monday, June 9, 2014

A carrier bag


A carrier bag, caught in a sycamore tree, heaved and pulled, strained itself skinny, thrashed to escape. Its mouth, a terrorized rip, was lightening in the branches.

A carrier bag gulped itself grotesque in the squall on the Lower Kimmage Road. In convulsion,  its face inflated to featurelessness.

A carrier bag flew by. I saw nothing but hands wringing.

  

          The baby in the tree

 
The baby in the tree
is screaming.
 

High above the pathway
near the black tips
of the sycamore branches
he is gaping,
white membraned luminous.
 

How did he get there?
 

He blew there in the wind;
it took him
like a flag from his cot
till he was stretched
across the boughs
like the wings of a bat.
 

And who sees him?
 

I do;
all his hopeless writhing,
too high for the passerby.
And his screams:
too high,
too high for the passerby.

 

 

 

 

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