Going Home

 

Deep

like an ocean.

Moonlight dim

and silent.

Empty

like a dancehall

that was once ........

Not my heyday.

Forty years earlier,

cycling

in the early hours

through countryside

like a dream.

That memory

an exhibit

now;

collected,

preserved in a jar

with label’s print

barely legible.

Was carefree then,

pedalling

your way home;

happy countryside.

Happy life.

Unseen turn.

Exhilaration that.

Pumped up heart

huge with joy,

youthful expectation

unbattered.

Quiet suddenly.

In that countryside

a front wheel spinning.

The fish 

that is solitary

in the ocean

is essential to the stillness

that is around it.

Stillness

that is  a consiracy

waiting.

And the stone walls

suddenly 

stone-deaf to whistling.

On the Canal

 

In the dim light of a December evening

swans, bright as lit matches, are gliding

over the streaming oarweed of traffic lights

on their way to Harold’s Cross Bridge.

Ghostly on winter’s glass,

oblivious to the world’s commotion,

passing without trace, blind to their own beauty

and all the more beautiful for that.

Woods

 

                 Light falling

                 like snow through the leaves.

                                                   Walking among the anemones:

                                                   my giant’s feet

                                                   sinking into that sprawl of city lights.

The woods silent,

its million ears pricked.

A wet day

 

I stay inside,

inside myself.

Raindrops leave

perfect rings on the sand;

BB King sings

with his lips in a perfect o

but that’s not

what I want to say.

A child never spoke,

not in a year

except once

to say no.

I thought about that

and surmised

his parents

had left him short.

Rain magnifies

the grey of clouds.

The electric wires

sag;

yes, and on days like this

I remember.

What I remember most:

a gable end

when a window was

my world.

That boy never smiled,

not once that year.

Green, vibrant in rain,

but  chilly,

encages

but seems infinite.

The oyster catchers move along

but nothing changes;

I drop the magazine

pick up the laptop

and the rain

pressing harder against the window;

I will read the magazine;

he refuses to look up.

 

Sitting at your grave

brings nothing but absence.

Memory is you now,

I carry you in my head,

within me wherever I go.

A Series of Donegal Bay Haiku

I've seldom used the haiku format; however, not having a prolonged piece of poetry to mind but having some impressions on scenes I come across every day, haiku suddenly appeared to be a very useful choice. So, here then is my 'bash' at haiku.

Showers in the bay,

unfurled clouds their sails –

the Killybegs Regatta.

Oystercatchers hunched

searching for shell fish

are spattered ink on a page.

The white cloud is clinging

to the mountainside

as tight as unwashed hair.

The oystercatchers

that were flecks on the strand

take to flight chevron shaped.

A hail shower

extends upward into cumulus –

atomic bomb.

Two Rings

 

Meteorites

trailing the circuses

we’ve lived.

Curling,

shaping to each other

as though time

will eventually interlock us;

two rings.