The baby in the tree

It's surprising where ideas come from. There  was a white carrier bag snagged high in a tree on Leinster Road.

         The baby in the tree

The baby in the tree

is screaming.

High above the pathway

near the black tips

of the sycamore branches

he is gaping,

white membraned luminous.

How did he get there?

He blew there in the wind;

it took him

like a flag from his cot

till he was stretched

across the boughs

like the wings of a bat.

And who sees him?

I do;

all his hopeless writhing,

too high for the passerby.

And his screams:

too high,

too high for the passerby.

When you pass

written with Karen McManus in mind.

When you pass,

cups miss mouths,

ladders slip,

buckets crash down,

cars veer,

cyclists swerve,

drunkards sober up,

poles and policemen collide,

business men miss kerbs,

schoolboys drool.

Me? I’m just your wing mirror,

enjoying the devastation

behind you.

Dum te dum te dum

In glorious Technicolor, breathtaking Cinemascope, magnificent

dum te dum te dum te dum stereophonic surround sound, Michael

lying on corrugated roof watching for Germans or Indians

crawling on their bellies through the tall grass of Glynn’s garden.

Eyes, pillbox slits. Sharp blades of grass quivering in June breeze;

or infiltrating dogs, enemies. Sounds, rustlings in the heat haze,

above the undergrowth, flicker in his eyes; sweeps the sweat

from his forehead beneath a blazing noon sun; endlessly patience,

tripwire-finger on trigger. It was the time of get that woman back

into the wagon, but Michael skipped last night’s soppy love scene

and is now the last one, the only one, still alive to defend O’Dea’s.