Near the kitchen window

Near the kitchen window

(A memory of my father)

 Needing sunlight

for his sorcery:

                                                                   smoke from his pipe:

spirits rising, coiling;

graceful tresses

suspended momentarily

then diffused,

dissipated

just as he, himself,

 too soon, was gone.

Childhood Misunderstanding

Ireland in my childhood was a country that marched to the tune of the catholic church. The year was measured out in church events and feast days; not so much now, the mind of the population has shifted. But in a country that still fervently believed in the christian story: spirits, apparitions, miracles, Satan and hell, not to mention still having a consideration for its pre-christian beliefs, it's not suprising that a child with a lively imagination might find nighttime just a little scary. It was an adventure in its possibilities ( and of course the dark shadows of wet and cloudy climate addedgreatly to this); it was both exciting and frightening in a child's mind.

 Whale Song

When I was young

night cleared away the countryside;

leaving nothing till morning.

Sometimes a dog barked;

barked in the void;

a bark that carried forever.

When I hear whale song,

I hear that void

and I remember a childs terror.

When The Devil Came To Omey

 

A hare, whiskers taut, eyes bulging,

scouring the mainland

in the grey hour of evening

when demons go searching for souls.

Sitting sentinel on day’s shoreline,

digesting the seen and the half-seen,

reining in phantasms,

deciphering commotions in the air.

He senses, suddenly, a juddering of molecules,

some looming presence, 

an approaching darkness darker than night, 

and an ice-bolt hits him.

With the flesh creeping along his flanks,

he kicks back his hind legs

and bounds through the tussocks,

to the church in the hollow.

The bell’s baleful clank, strange at this hour,

draws shadowy figures out of the night

into a bedraggled huddle

in the sanctuary of the church.

Feichín, now man,

the hare’s wild gaze still in his eyes,

turns to them gravely

to announce the arrival of Satan on Omey.

It is not just his works,

but the devil himself will walk among us;

be wary of every soul on the road,

every animal in the fields.

Speak the name Jesus at every turn,

a flail to his ears;

let your minds be tabernacles of the Lord

so he finds no space for evil there.

Feichín’s brethren left no soil

on which the seed of evil could be sown,

no patch of ground to build a hut;

made Omey inhospitable to him who rules Hell;

and so it is to this day.

It was as hare, Feichín saw Satan leave the island,

felt the agitation fall from the air,

and the twitchiness in his nose subsided.