Granny

Granny in woollen cardigans, bespectacled,

smooth-cheeked, sitting at the stove end

of the kitchen table, stockings rolled down,

wanting the dog to lick the ulcers on her legs.

Cups of tea coming and going like seasons,

showers of sunlight canonizing her fitfully,

switching on the light of her soft white hair,

the wild rose that bloomed free in her face.

The comfortable plumpness of her body

always shaped to her generous curiosity;

her old voice gentle as seaweed on a wave,

chatting life back into the bones of the dead.

The Viewing.

Dead: the colour of old cream,

his eyes shuttered shut;

so neat, besuited and slim,

the weight he lost dying.

They made a basket of his fingers

with a rosary spilling down;

everyone said he looked lovely,

but when I touched his face

it wasn’t him at all.

Evening

Some poems never get there. This one has been with me for nearly as long as the old man it's written about.
It's frustrating, but, then again, it's probably a good thing that certain accomplishments keep us grasping.

Evening

Evening light dozed on unwashed dishes;

old dust coated china plates;

the Sacred Heart, smoked and sagging,

looked down from a height;

a clock ticked like a jaded heart.

His face, at the table, jerked uncontrollably,

occasionally he choked on his tongue.

All that might be called life was in a biscuit box

in a press: letters, photographs, Christmas cards, postcards;

and a silver pocket-watch he got from his mother.

Rivers Run

Rivers run over the land,

slivers of sky and light,

their spindly bodies flowing,

fish and ripples one,

alive.

Clamouring in the high places,

lisping in the  low;

spry in youth,

sedate in age;

always journeying to their end

to run again.

Peninsula

A peninsula: shingle, cockle and barnacle shells, strips of desiccated wrack,

greened with sea-holly. The wooden cabin, though frequently lashed with spray,

was salted dry, and coloured somewhere between bone and limestone;

I lived there for five months before you came.

From the land our light seemed no more than a single candle burning;

the clothes on our line had the appearance of  rags,

and the smoke from our fire curled into the sky with a nonchalance

that suggested our daily struggles with lighting washed up timbers.

You’ll remember the shingle made walking difficult; with each step the stones rolled.

You said it sounded like the grinding of a mouth full of loose teeth; but, around the bay,

 a billion stones rolled thunderously with each beached wave;

and the  breeding terns came at us like boomerangs.

Nights: we were  unlit stars perhaps, but at one with the universe, free and alive

 in the unbroken expanse of shore, sea and sky; we had  space

 to be colossal, to exhilarate; and moonlight, our spotlight to roar songs into the cosmos,

to take the universe’s light into our eyes and exult in it.

Came the day of migration: wings outstretched, muscles fluid, necks craned to our separate
destinations; we, without backward glances, took to the air

with eyes big enough to countenance the curve of the earth, greedy enough to fly it;

and left our peninsula, a finger  pointing to somewhere .

As a chaos

1.

As a chaos of jagged girders,

black against the sky,

looks like pain;

yet it makes a beautiful ugliness.

2.

That day’s electrodes, bare and unprotected,

were waiting for me. From the moment I awoke,

nothing was ever going to halt

their run to me from that future.

3.

I met my moment on the street;

it made jazz in my bones;

lifted me

oh, much higher than I can ever sing.

4.

Sir, I said, these particles vibrate,

you hear them on a still night

and after that, you will always hear them.

They smash glass if you do not control it.

Self-creating Fluidity in Nature

When dense enough,

murmuration or shoal,

a flow becomes a fluid,

self-created;  

all parts align, cluster and stream

according to physical  laws.

Living parts, starling or herring,

generate intra-forces  that govern

the whole, the system,

effecting dynamics  recognizable

throughout nature.