Series of Haiku about Love

A leaf turned golden

Floats downward

You sink into my lap

The dream of us

Furled in each others’ arms

Sinking in a fireside’s allure 

Your words

My eyelids falling

Soft as feathers on feathers

Sleep steals over us

Our atoms enticed into each other

With love

Pub tutorial

‘Factorial naught and factorial one both equal one.’

‘Isn’t that a good one?’ said Peter.

‘Jays! Gas alright.’ Ned sipped another layer off the head of his pint of Guinness.

‘Tis for sure’ said Matt, nodding his head diagonally upward.

‘And you’ll know (in your line of work) factorial ten seconds is exactly six weeks.’

‘Aye, it would be.’ said Ned.

‘Tis of course’ said Matt.

I was hating myself for having mentioned teaching.

‘And’ said Peter, ‘ye know, of course, that 10 = 9.9999’

 ‘I do. I do.’  I said much too quickly.

Peter extracted a biro and paper from an inner pocket

with surprising promptness.

Let x  = 0.9999, ⇒ 10x = 9.999

⇒10x – x = 9, ⇒ 9x = 9

X =1, ⇒ 10x = 10

⇒ 10 = 9.9999

‘Aye.’ said Ned with another sip from his pint of Guinness. ‘That’s it.’

‘Another pint, Peter?” Matt asked.

‘Sure, why not!’

And turning back to me: ‘I’ve been doing a bit of work on  Abel’s Impossibility Theorem.’ 

Gravel

i.

Nights spent  brooding,

trickling down life’s gravel,

finally confronting self.

Now appraising

the faded colours of my dreams,

peeling flakes of ambition  ̶

 

all carriages, shunted

into a siding,

came to a juddering halt.

ii.

Prodding each other onward,

a procession  passes.

They glance my way,

̶  old friends, acquaintances   ̶ 

holding up their palms’

blank stars  to me;

I gaze gormlessly.

iii.

Would you smile?

Would you invest that much of yourself

even in passing?

An Owl in my head

An idea from the animals represented on the bicorns worn by felos at carnaval in Galicia.

‘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.’

Never Dreaming of There Because

Here

is where I am.

Always here,

wherever.

Happy Christmas.

How heavy is the weight of Vatican wealth?

Crosses in the cloakroom, please.

Were you going to write me a love-letter?

One of those  poems I come back to occasionally. It  changes each time:  the words, the  meaning and the atmosphere. Some poems defy you; that's good.




Were you going to write me a love-letter?

Did your fingers falter above the keys?

Was there the cacophony of grid-lock on the page,

lines of off-duty taxis:

words refusing to carry love?

At such a juncture, I, in the past, have let my fingers

tap-dance away from a love-letter,

tap a stammer,

morse to garble the unwritable truth.

What was the occasion?

It's 1908, Rathmines Town Hall is decked out in style. That July, the Summer Olympics were held in White City Stadium in White City, London.The Great Britain and Ireland team won 56 gold, 51 silver and 39 bronze medals. But I wonder can anyone explain why the Town Hall was wearing its finery?

Rag Trees

Rag trees are, of course, less common now. The faith that dressed them for centuries is in rapid decline. It's that fact that gives them a poignancy that's quite different to the  poignancy they had in their  heyday. Then it was sheer number of requests or appeals that hard-pressed believers had for the Almighty.

Rag Tree

A thousand dancers for Patrick’s stone eyes:

leg-kicking

heel-tapping

thigh-slapping;

each one a soul treading thin air.

A thousand clamours for Patrick’s stone ears:

tongue-clicking

finger-snapping

hand-clapping;

each petition a gutt'ring flare.

In memory of my mother

She was

Two cups of flour resourceful

Plumb-line straight

Three sides of a triangle logical

Rain-coat wise

Five woollen blankets caring.

Confession

Gulls curdled out of the tide;

spume flew then settled.

I confessed at the top of my voice

to an ocean convulsed in its own troubles.

All of it disappeared in the spray and the tumult, 

then I sang.

And my voice danced away

over the strand.

Take it easy

i

To think of you in that bed,

twenty years on,

going the same way he did,

but without hope.

How do you close your eyes

to catch a night’s sleep?

ii

Struggling for each breath,

(mouthfuls of air, for god’s sake!),

I said ‘Mam, stop working so hard’

Dying, and still forced to work.

‘Take it easy,

 take it easy.’

Her hold on my hand slackened,

her eyes fell to the side,

she took it easy,

That memory forces itself on me; even now, I sometimes wonder, did I speed her on her way?

60s.

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, spick and span, in the sitting room.

On The Beach

When, at the end of the beach, I turned

to face that gleaming scimitar of strand,

the filigreed waves  hurdling landward,

the geode patterns beneath my feet,

a scythe of 12 oyster-catchers by the water,

their chevron markings perfect in that light,

I felt, suddenly, the glory of creation.

And, as I walked, I felt the completeness of my belonging,

 and my impermanence, like those scarves of sand blowing

ahead of the wind, and not at all sad for that,

and seeing too that beliefs are transitory,

that the earth will swallow all, and shine on

when all else has run its course.

Artur Widak's Photograpic Exhibition Highlighting The Refugees' Plight

 ‘The Path to Freedom:pictures illustrating the journey refugees are taking from 
 war-torn countries to Europe’ featuring the photographs of photojournalist 
 Artur Widak will be on display in Rathmines Library from November 17th  to 
 December 7th.
 The exhibition features some of Widak's most moving and thought-provoking 
 images,many of which have been highly acclaimed and have appeared in 
 publications such as The Guardian, Huffington Post, The Independent (UK), Le 
 Monde among many others . They portray, all too vividly, the hardships and 
 sadnesses that the Syrian refugees are enduring. It is impossible to view 
 these pictures and not be incensed at the ongoing inhumanity of it all. 

Widak will deliver a talk on his experiences at 6.30pm, Nov 17th in Rathmines 
 Library.