Poem beside your hospital bed

Your face that I loved
has changed so completely
that I already know
Our time has gone.

And, as dying like a sandstorm
rearranges your features,
I am useless,
a cripple of words.

But if the winds
 in your head will carry
the smallest part
of what I'm trying to say, father

let it be
that my proud years
are tatters here;
I love you.

Wheel

In this wheel

I am spokes, smile and scowl.

Tonight, careering around the town,

I see all the pub doors closing

and take it personally;

don’t want to go in, don’t want to stay out.

Next week I'll tumble down these steps again;

people always make room

but then, just as I've nearly passed,

they kick me.

My smile and scowl are identical;

they think I'm a contraption.

Visiting the Corsetmaker

 It was ireland in the sixties. Corset conversation veered very close to immodesty. Michael O'Hehir was the voice of Sunday afternoons in Summer, and a spin in the car seemed like a good idea, but children get bored quickly.

 VISITING THE CORSETMAKER

Miss Gately, you know, the corsetmaker; her cottage 

thatched and whitewashed beneath sycamores ragged with 

crows and their bickering. A Sunday afternoon, my mother 

walking to the red door and it opened and closed and 

nothing else stirring for ages but ourselves in the back of the 

white consul with the red roof at the end of the avenue, just 

outside the gate; stone walls and lichen patches wallpapering 

our afternoon. Father dropping off in the driver’s seat 

while Micheal O'Hehir commentated on matches, one after 

another, without ever taking a breath in all that pipe smoke; matches collecting in the ash-tray all burnt to tiny black bird 

bones and the condensation all used up with words and 

faces dribbling pathetically into shapeless bad temper. Over 

and over: will she ever come out, can’t we go now, why do 

we always have to come, move your legs; till eventually she 

would reappear, a slap in the doorway, motor jauntily, 

red-headed, back to the car like it’s been five minutes or 

something, and Dad’s awake, reversing from the gate, back 

into the remains of a Sunday afternoon.

And I never knew what went on in there; never saw who 

opened the door, never saw a package, never heard anything 

about it. My father didn’t know either. I remember she 

took my sister with her when my sister was in secondary 

school. I wouldn’t have wanted to join them anyway, it was obviously a woman’s house.

Aging

Since my molecules are disbanding,

I am becoming invisible,

each day a little more unseen.

As self-belief flickers, I see less in myself;

certainties less certain,

I take steps with ever greater unsteadiness.

Discovery

I am a fish,

a sleek white sliver swimming

above the ground.

Eyes all around are agog,

not mine; they are open

as mirrors are.

Nor do I swim, all swim past,

in the contrary direction;

in fact, I am quite stationary.

‘Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion

‘What are we?’ I ruminate;

flat stone skipping over water.

‘What are we?’ opposite wall

in blind alley.

‘What are we?’ armchair

drowsy in fireglow.

‘What are we?’ a tooth

in kindred company.

‘What are we?’ pin fixed

 in a pin-cushion.

Nightee Night Night

A boy, stripy pyjamas astray in the woods,

is walking, bare feet in the leaf litter,

beneath woozy woozy woozy drunken trees.

There may be stars beyond those branches,

but teeth and tongues flickering in the leaves,

trees' lingering fingers slithering around him.

Skitterings scramblings, cluttering his ears,

wrigglings worming his skin;

darknesses flashing his eye-bulbs;

beneath those million dripping fruits licked leaves,

his foot flattens on something gelatinous  ̶

he is then all of  him altogether shreik-shaped.