Wednesday, October 26, 2016

Farmland in Meath
Hill of Tara

                                                 
                                               From up here, this landscape is a cubist composition ─
    a shattered windscreen.

                      Closer: traces of ancient earthworks ─
                                  pre-historic worm spirals beneath the skin.

                            Closer: tumuli, eyes fixed to the cosmos ─
birthmarks of science.

                     Closer: chevrons, spirals, sunbursts ─
birthmarks of art.



Thursday, October 20, 2016

The Climb


    As I watched,
a mother and child climbed
the steep summit of Croagh Patrick;
stopping, starting, stopping, starting.


While tourists were passing like traffic,
two flies, clinging to scree,
scrambled upward, pulling
the universe’s blue cloak tighter about them.

Sunday, October 16, 2016

He Fishes With Cormorants.




An idea from a beautiful documentary I saw many years  ago: 'He Dances for his Cormorants'.






He fishes with Cormorants



Man on a raft
tray wafer   ̶
a jabbering macaw  ̶

sprinkles
cormorants
into the river.

Cliffs,
rocks, teeth
witness all:

silver purses
leaping backwards,
their gullets full.



See YouTube clip at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7l6Pe0CKsg

Wednesday, October 12, 2016

Remembering Pearse Hutchinson



No Detail Too Small 


No detail too small, you balanced it on your pen.
Watchmaker with magnified eye,
you admired the exquisiteness in small things.

When a gentian is a match for the Matterhorn,
an everyday kindness is treasure, humility dazzles,
and universal courteousness is a longed for revolution.   

Sunday, October 9, 2016

Door hanging from its hinges,




breakfast things on the table,
newspapers neat in a corner,
armchair facing the television.


In the bedroom, make-up bottles,
4711, dresses in the wardrobe,
night-gown thrown onto the bed.
.  

Calendar stopped: July 1984,
a pair of slippers still awaiting her feet;
feet  silent as air.

Sunday, October 2, 2016

Phonecall




One afternoon, long after, I call her.
I imagine the phone’s ring-tone
streaming through the air
of her sitting room;

above her writing desk,
wallets of holiday photos,
saucer of earrings,
a broken watch.

And now full sail over the carpet,
leaving behind
a mess of Sunday papers,
empty wine bottle on the couch.

Into the hall,
above floor-boards,
raincoat on the banister,
umbrella fallen onto the first step.

To the landing,
boxes of books,
the standard lamp forever
on its way to the bin.

My calling her: smoke
curling in a square of sunlight,
a cloud of silver smidgens
with nowhere to go.