We all live in here;
teeming around each other,
drinking from the same tap,
turning in our beds in unison;
recycling our breaths.
Sooner or later, each of us
turns up at our neighbour’s
offering worn-out clay,
coming away with a mirror
and the wood from a kitchen table.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Meteorites
trailing the circuses
we’ve lived.
Curling,
shaping to each other
as though time
will eventually interlock us;
two rings.
