Wednesday, August 30, 2017

Trees


Trees keening winter nights away,
their wails woven into the wind;

heads of hair like seaweed taken from the strand,
flails knotted in insoluble puzzles.

Underground, roots twisting toward some source
shaped by memory;

trees like abandoned lovers,
scratching down the marble of night-time.

Friday, August 25, 2017

Don’t say too much

or you’ll give it away.




Peter Doig’s paintings are poetic; magical, mysterious, beautiful and different. Canoes and boats feature a lot, it's a good choice: figures isolated on the water,  going to God knows where,while the interface of water and air introduces the notion of an alternative world.

His six characters in ‘Figures in Red Boat’ are suspended between something horribly grotesque and perfect serenity, the explained and the unexplained, this world and some other. They look lost and it’s interesting that the figure on the left seems to be seated outside the boat. An exotic landscape is suggested in the background, but it might be mist; there is sunlight on the figures in a dim grey setting.

Was there a bloody accident, leaving six people somewhere beyond life? Is this a boat into the next world?

Mirage-like; ambiguous and disturbing, it leaves me wanting to write about it; but what? It’s quite brilliant.

Monday, August 21, 2017

I am weave




I am weave,
flows bare bones of the land,
roots, blood my stealth;

streams mountain hair,
hillsides’ ruminations,
meadow fantasies;

bleaches sunlight,
sugars earth,
rips the seas’ tides;

calls clockwork from branches,
buries bones in soil, drags days behind,
stirs the year.

Wednesday, August 16, 2017

Writer’s block



Nothing lands on this plain;
nothing moves
but its seeping emptiness.

Goggled pilot
high above
this snow-gagged wilderness,

loop or spin,
I leave no shadow;
the paper grins.

Tuesday, August 8, 2017

Swallows performed by Garonne


Elaine O'Dea's song Swallows performed by Elaine and Elisabeth, together Garonne.









Saturday, August 5, 2017

The Trees at the Rath*



Trees keening winter nights away,
their wails woven into the wind;

heads of hair like seaweed taken from the strand,
flails knotted in insoluble puzzles.

Underground, roots, twisting toward some source,
shaped by memory;

trees like abandoned lovers,
scratching down the marble of night-time.


* Fairy ring, fort

Wednesday, August 2, 2017

Meteorite


Meteorite

When the starlings were the full of the sky,
we stood, rooted, gob-smacked,
exhilarated beyond words,
knowing that no air-show
nor any natural phenomenon ever compared.

Next morning I opened the back door
to find a knot of feathers on the ground,
a starling as far from flight as could be imagined,
as dull as the stone
that once blazed an arc across the heavens.