Sunday, May 27, 2018

Prayer at a soldier’s grave




Lord,
You created this young man to do Your will
wherever righteous  politicians may send him;
to loose his bullets into other young men
sent by other politicians, who, seeing the thing
otherwise, also uphold what is right.

His intelligence and strength used to cull those
most like himself, serving country.
I pray that this transubstantiation of body to stone slab
pleases You  as it has pleased those who sent him,
who have much to gain from his sacrifice.

Thursday, May 24, 2018

The Havoc of Climate Change Already Here



Leaving the climatic effects of global warming to one side, the geopolitical ramifications are truly scary.  Take a short while to listen to Professor Jennifer Leaning  in this BBC podcast, Climate Change and Me:  https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b3fkps
     

Saturday, May 19, 2018

A life alone



No one lives with the moon, no one could;
the moon is beautiful, too beautiful;
a sentence to loneliness.

Night after night, wandering, catching glimpses 
  of lovers through half-pulled curtains, it loiters 
to glare on their passions with arctic disdain.

Then scurries onward through the forests of the sky,
to recover its empty heaven,
the solitude that freezes its heart.

Monday, May 14, 2018

A View Upward




Two swallows, pencil points on the ends of mathematical compasses,
wheeling in a smoky blue sky, took me with them; a sort of freedom.

Lying, watching the sky think, composed of  nothing but separating atoms,
I, you might say, was reassembled in the magnificence of that one moment.

Exhilaration,  a reassembling of the way I thought, sent me cascading outward,




Saturday, May 12, 2018

Napalm.


            
           (a poem about distance)


            Nice to feel the sun on your back,
            cool yourself down in the sea;
            watch the girls on the beach:
            beautiful bodies.

            Nice too, the sounds of the seaside:
            a speed-boat buzzing, 
            the tide washing onto the sand,
            children screaming.

Monday, May 7, 2018

On Murvagh Beach





There’s so little difference between sea and cloud
that the whole scene might as well be upside down,
with the bisectors of St John’s Point, a finger stretching
across the horizon, and Mullagmore, a finger, Adam’s to God,
reaching back. To the left, white clouds are hanging,
sheets from a bed, down the sides of Ben Bulben; to the right
the Bluestacks are slumped  beneath mosquito nets of rain.

Smokey light is filling the bay like ether, lulling the world,
so waves that have raced across the ocean, surviving the fury
at Rosnowlagh, now collapse, spent, onto the sand.
Murvagh beach, pooled with clouds we’re walking through;
two silhouettes moving along the bottom edge of a canvas now cause
 a tin of paint to splatter upward: a bevy of oystercatchers taking to flight.

Saturday, May 5, 2018

Riverrun





Riverrun over the land:
slivered sky and light,
spindly bodies flowing,
fish and ripples one,
alive.

Clamouring in the high places,
lisping in the  low.
Spry in youth,
sedate in old age;
always journeying to their end
to run again.