Breathing

Now my father's life

is breathing.

Heavy work. 

He has already slipped away

to be alone

while we outside

mark every breath

like lap timers.

 

Now come the spaces:

a breath

is an isolated thing. 

Finally one breath

arrives alone. 

I feel a soul has left,

 

but just then

I see, so clearly,

it was hope

that slipped out of the room.

 

(from Sunfire)

from Felos ainda serra

included in the chapbook published in Galicia in 2005

 

Go to bed, Michael,

or the monsters will come.

Say your prayers,

build yourself a wall.

Pull the blankets up

over your eyes.

Be silent down your burrow,

the night sky is stirring.

Go to sleep, Michael,

they will not disturb the dead.

-----------------------------------

“There is an owl in my head”

said Joseph. “I am wise,

wisest of all creatures”.

“There is a tiger in my head”

said Paul. “I am  fierce,

all creatures fear me”.

“A stag in mine”

said Thomas. “ I am majestic,

admired by all”.

“My head is empty”

said Jim. “ a space

for all creatures to come and go.”

Then

                              

It was the time of Afton and Albany,

Joe O’Neill’s band and the Adelaides,

hay forks sharing pub windows

with Daz and Persil; the Smithwicks sign

and the Harp sign, half-ones of Guinness.

It was a time of pipe-smoking

beneath naked bulbs and neon strips,

the priest in his cassock,

Hillman Hunters, Ford Corsairs,

Wilkinson Swords and Fruit Gums.

Of scarved heads at mass, berets,

the Messenger and the Far East,

dress makers and blacksmiths;

hollowed faces in the County Home,

yanks in the sitting room.

(previously pub in Cyphers)

Memory of My Father on Lough Ree

It was so safe and reassuring to walk as a child holding your father’s hand. How great and powerful fathers appeared to their seven year old sons. How perfect those times were. One day. One day you would be like that: strong and kind, if you could ever know enough.

Did you ever marvel at your father’s ability to drive from one part of the country to another and get you there, right to the door? That knowledge; it didn’t seem possible.

No surprise  then at the difficulties that commonly manifest themselves in teenage years when the role model is tarnished and communication have begun to fray. And when one looks for affirmation, it does not come easily, or not at all, from the hero branded into those souls years before.

Revisiting Lough Ree.

  
Morning comes colourless;
trees stoop to the lake like pilgrims
witnessing images that are riddles in the water.

A sudden shriek.  “Over here, no here, over here."
I see nothing; the lake keeps its children chilled
in ice buckets among the reeds.

Once I trailed a ripple from a boat
that  bevelled this water. I remember the oars’
loud soft thud, slap till I die

It was June. Insects teemed on the surface.
The sun, that tanned our backs, lulled the countryside
into sleep before the fields were even cranked.

My father was there.

Now December.The lake drags its cutlery
through this cress-green landscape
with an indifference that leaves memories shivering.

Following a Different Piper

It’s been a busy and productive three weeks. After researching mythology associated with Irish neolithic sites, particularly Brewel Hill and Killeen Cormac in County Kildare, Loughcrew in County Meath, I have written 12 new poems to accompany a forthcoming exhibition of paintings by Elaine Leigh, a colleague of mine. Elaine’s images draw on stories related to these sites: the piper and dancers turned to stone on Brewel Hill; the Cailleach, goddess of winter, who scattered the stones that gave rise the cairns at Loughcrew; the Púca, (related to Puck), shape shifter and mischief-maker in Celtic lore.

The paintings are abstract: suggestions of human visages in stone, orbs of energy like flowers on stalks that are threads through time, ballerina-like trees, skeletal heads of horses, hounds, goats: the various incarnations of the Púca. They are richly coloured in gold, crimson and azure blue, beautifully rendered, highly original, full of energy, absorbing and evocative.

For me, it has been a change in direction. Not altogether my comfort zone: getting the balance between the modern and ancient proved difficult. Should there be constant reference to oak woods and hazel copses, should I use November or Samhain; keeping the “faery” element without becoming 19th century presents problems.

It has been instructive; the difficulty of writing poems that are not merely retelling what is already in the images, that provide information on the images while retaining artistic merit in themselves; poems that complement the spirit and mood of the paintings. Has it worked? I have no doubt about Elaine Leigh’s work, and I’m looking forward to your judgements on mine.

On a different tack but, coincidently, related, this Thursday there will be two sessions of story-telling in Rathmines Library at 2pm and 5pm. A fantastic opportunity to hear wonderful tellers weave their magic.

Damp and Drizzle.

Damp wet, wet, wet.

Grim drizzle

Leaning against the wall

All day.



If I could hum the mood

Into your ear

You'd know what I mean;

You'd remember.

Marine.

Prostrate on the beach,
a slop of sea pulse,
a glob black as chewed tobacco
fallen from the lip.


My mother said -
the sea is sick,
it's breath on the beach is bad
and its puke is scattered
all over the sand.


She said
all its pin points are boiling,
its stomach heaves;
that it will yellow our skin
if it gets half a chance.


Then this morning,
when something with small eyes
came out of the sea,
I pelted stones at it
till the tractor came.

(from Sunfire)

Tonight I Nearly Died.

Tonight I nearly died
in the Sunday chain
returning to Dublin.
A scythe
arched onto the road;
as I rushed
I nearly overtook life.

What did I learn?

My eyes are good
dilated in horror.

They Gave Me a Chair

They Gave Me A Chair.

I either read about or saw a picture of Simone de Beauvoir sitting on a chair above the grave at Sartre's funeral.That image of a woman sitting above a grave with the backdrop of the thousands that turned out for Sartre's funeral is strange. Somehow sitting on the chair makes wallpaper of the crowds.And I imagine the act of sitting would, for some reason, alter your thinking.

They gave me a chair
so I could sit beside the grave,
like a woman painted in
after the funeral crowds had gathered.

And I, his lover, looking down
as though this earth was some sort of heaven,
thinking
I'd prefer it south-facing
or he could do with a bit more space
or some other such nonsense.

Then, alone again, I found,
fixed above all my memories,
the picture of a coffin
on the floor of an empty room
as seen from above.

(from Sunfire)

By the Grand Canal.

The trees “in their Autumn glory”; the canal an unstirring, uncreased line of sky, almost a memory of blue. The lock houses holding their breathes as though they too, might blow away like leaves of the departing year. All nature seems entranced on days like today. And though the background din of cars is incessant, the atmosphere is as it must always have been on becalmed days: serene, slightly eery, lonesome almost. But the butter coloured light gives it a touch of Constable, romantic if you’re with a lover, sad if you’re alone. And everywhere memories falling with just the gentlest of alarms.


Beyond The Twelfth Lock.

All the world was in a pool by the canal;
all the Autumn,
all the Summer turned peacock
gazing at itself
quietly, still, face to the water.

Where I had seen the swans
flaming in Spring,
today I came on Summer,
gold and beautiful,
about to die.

LADY'S ISLAND.

Our Lady's Island in Co. Wexford has a special atmosphere to it. Like many places of pilgrimage, christian or pre-christian, its topography is distinctive and interesting. An island in a lagoon,(appears more like an inland lake); add to that some striking ruins,(Augustinian priory and Norman tower), outdoor furniture needed for crowds of pilgrims, quirky mementoes left by pilgrims, and you've got a place that cuts a dash in the landscape and draws the curious in.



LADY'S ISLAND.

The water waves roll ashore in Hail Mary rhythms,
winds come, contours around the island
and speakers on poles are abandoned mouths
where rosaries of sinners collected in May.
Pews like pricked ears; regiment readiness;
oh Mary, you sure pick your locations!

In a hole in a ditch a community of holy ones
fancy dressed and frozen by a wall;
and all encased in glass, ready to shake
but snowless in July.


Best wishes, see you Monday,

Michael

Rag Trees and Holy Wells

St Kieran's Holy Well, Kilcar, Co Donegal




Holy wells and rag trees, the exotic places of the Irish countryside, have long ago joined the list of endangered species. Disappearing yearly under bulldozers or through abandonment, one day they will be irretrievably gone and yet another colour will have been lost from the rainbow of Irish culture.

St Patrick's Holy Well, Ballyshannon, Co Donegal

Heightened Vision

Heightened vision. And seeing everything around you as part of the texture of your life.(Too much texture.) The minutest detail magnified, and considered like a tiny echo of the main argument in your head. This lucidity that can be part of the dam-burst of a lover’s quarrel.If you see it coming, get out of the way.





Seeing............

(part of my love story)

discarded matches on the pub floor,
reflections in gutters,
cobwebs in the corners of ceilings,
petals shed and shriveling,
railings’ wrought iron curlicues,
broken windows, tattered curtains,
carrier bags snagged on branches,
the moon running along beside me,
heron one-legged by the pond,
a glove on the footpath;

each fleck, speck, flaw in your argument;
every minute branded, second burned
as thoroughly as a pipe smoker’s match.


I would like to refer back a few posts to July 1st, Autumn Conversations; it seems I posted an earlier version of the poem, not the one that was finally published in the Sunday Tribune. So for anyone interested, I've made the changes.

Communion Girls.

Small white spinning tops;

tinkered with children

parade affectation,

grotesque display

of competing Hail Marys.



On May 25th

doll darlings

agitate for cash;

let us pray.


“Let us pray

for long white dresses,

matching gloves,

patent shoes and handbags.”



“Dear Baby Jesus

let there be sun;

may it twinkle and shine

on our little one.”

Miners Town

"Carry slack" she says
to the spires of smoke
stealing away from Miners Town
where every child is born
to carry a bucket.

In the evening the little men
will gather below the street
where the pit-head eyebrows meet
so when their fathers come,
they'll parade nearby;
smaller jackets just.

A jet shape of geese
passes through the smoke columns;
for a moment she travels too
but then they leave her,
disappearing each year
over the same roof-top.

"Carry slack," she repeats
into the dog's ear of a kitchen door,
and in the shortened evening
she too unfurls a stalk of smoke
that'll mark her place
in the forest above Miners Town.