The Discovery

Many years after he had died,

I found the smell of my father’s office in his briefcase.

Pipe-smoke, cigarettes, pencil-parings, paper;

not just his office but part of himself
still in existence after all this time.

When I was small I would ask to sit there, beside him,

in the heat, the smoke, that mixture of smells. 

He would say if you’re quiet; I would promise

until, minutes later, I talked too much or stirred too much

and, well, I was ejected.

I opened the case to an assemblage of atoms 

unique to my childhood,to the sixties even, 
put there by my father and now dissipating 
like an art treasure in the sunlight,

the last of my father turning to nothing.

A Hat on a Man.

A man donned a hat that shaded his eyes;

in consequence he was never the same man again.

Through whatever shadows he walked, light or dark,

he was hidden within his own shade, and knew it.

From then on people remarked on the man that nobody knew;

and he was forced to comply.

St Feichín Takes His Followers To Omey

Continuing adventures of St Feichín of Omey:

St Feichín Takes His Followers To Omey

Feichín in the wooded Glen of Fore

declared that men must shun trees,

‘for’, said he, ‘sinners thrive where rain

does not flay the hides of men.’

 ‘Let us go to Omey where trees have shrivelled to stone,

where thorns are the sea driven ahead of wild winds

and skies of  gorse will lash our backs.

Let us go far from trees who throw their shade on our repentance.’

So they built their monastery on the island

where the winds rode in on the dragons of the ocean,

where the rains fell incessantly, nails, even out of  a clear winter’s night

and their ears rang with the booming of souls drowning in eternity.