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.

3 poems: audio

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.

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

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.   

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.

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.