Memory of my Father

I have a memory of my father

sitting on a log in the shed,

reading the Sunday Independent

between the lawnmower and the garden tools;

it was his quiet  refuge.

I see him through the open door,

from across a narrow lawn newly mown;

bees are tracing zig-zag lines

between us;

and the lupins are in full bloom.

Summer stretched out over the fields and the railway line,

beyond the gates, out to the Shannon, and beyond;

but Summer is a precarious season.

I like lupins,

they look like Summer.

Brown Eyes

She had deep brown eyes;

I believe trout swam in their depths.

And I often spent an hour sitting there

with my feet disturbing their surfaces

like rain.

But the currents that stirred her

were much deeper.

They stirred the silt of years

far below,

far below my reflected face.

3 photographs

This little scene in the grounds of a holy well caught my attention.You can almost hear her exclamation, "Holy God!" And, what's gas is, the rest of the family got good steady jobs in the Civil Service.

This signpost above a beach gives you a fifty fifty chance of  taking the right direction to somewhere.

And, this sign at a petrol station isn't unique; I mean I know what it's saying, but I don't think its saying what it means.

Green into Grey (full)

Green into Grey

When the clouds

Fell onto the hill with the trees,

And they were sinking,

Sinking;

I thought of you.

The still heads

Belied their stirrings in the murk,

They were swimming,

Swimming;

And I thought of you.

All day long,

Shadows mutely threading that depth,

And they were ghostly,

Ghostly;

I thought of you.

When the sun

At last tore the mist from the trees

they were gleaming,

gleaming;

And I dreamt of you.

Green into Grey

When the clouds

Fell onto the hill with the trees

And they were sinking,

Sinking,

I thought of you.

Trees

Trees keening winter nights away,
their wails woven into the wind;

heads of hair like seaweed taken from the strand,
flails knotted in insoluble puzzles.

Underground, roots twisting toward some source
shaped by memory;

trees like abandoned lovers,
scratching down the marble of night-time.

Don’t say too much

or you’ll give it away.

Peter Doig’s paintings are poetic; magical, mysterious, beautiful and different. Canoes and boats feature a lot, it's a good choice: figures isolated on the water,  going to God knows where,while the interface of water and air introduces the notion of an alternative world.

His six characters in ‘Figures in Red Boat’ are suspended between something horribly grotesque and perfect serenity, the explained and the unexplained, this world and some other. They look lost and it’s interesting that the figure on the left seems to be seated outside the boat. An exotic landscape is suggested in the background, but it might be mist; there is sunlight on the figures in a dim grey setting.

Was there a bloody accident, leaving six people somewhere beyond life? Is this a boat into the next world?

Mirage-like; ambiguous and disturbing, it leaves me wanting to write about it; but what? It’s quite brilliant.

I am weave

I am weave,

flows bare bones of the land,

roots, blood my stealth;

streams mountain hair,

hillsides’ ruminations,

meadow fantasies;

bleaches sunlight,

sugars earth,

rips the seas’ tides;

calls clockwork from branches,

buries bones in soil, drags days behind,

stirs the year.

Writer’s block

Nothing lands on this plain;

nothing moves

but its seeping emptiness.

Goggled pilot

high above

this snow-gagged wilderness,

loop or spin,

I leave no shadow;

the paper grins.

Swallows performed by Garonne

Elaine O'Dea's song Swallows performed by Elaine and Elisabeth, together Garonne.

The Trees at the Rath*

Trees keening winter nights away,

their wails woven into the wind;

heads of hair like seaweed taken from the strand,

flails knotted in insoluble puzzles.

Underground, roots, twisting toward some source,

shaped by memory;

trees like abandoned lovers,

scratching down the marble of night-time.


* Fairy ring, fort

Meteorite

Meteorite

When the starlings were the full of the sky,

we stood, rooted, gob-smacked,

exhilarated beyond words,

knowing that no air-show

nor any natural phenomenon ever compared.

Next morning I opened the back door

to find a knot of feathers on the ground,

a starling as far from flight as could be imagined,

as dull as the stone

that once blazed an arc across the heavens.

Cailleach and the Púca

The Cailleach* stole apples from her rival Bríde and stored them till they were rosy-cheeked merry. They were in this condition when the Cailleach’s goat found them; and soon after he, in similar condition, jumped clean over the fence, and went careering through the countryside.

When she went in search of her goat, the first man the Cailleach met along the road remarked that a rabbit had stopped him and winked. A second met a hound who asked the way to Shrule, while a third, dishevelled and breathless, said a horse offered him a lift home, and carried him two miles out of his way.

For a year she trawled the countryside, hearing stories of a rampaging shape-shifter, till at last, the night after Samhain, she came in sight of her own field where an old man, sitting on a rock, eating an apple, greeted her.

They chatted happily for an hour or two on matters as diverse as the husbandry of goats and the tastiness of apples. There was a white patch on his meg that drew her attention over and over; there was something about it. And suddenly she knew. Like lightening she sprang on him, but he was swift and rolled from beneath her; in an instant, a hound was bounding into the distance with the most almighty great leaps.

The chase engaged, Cailleach flinging stones that lodged on hilltops, the hound sometimes treading on them as they rolled under his paws. They circumvented the whole of Ireland in a matter of days, leaving the landscape re-shaped behind them. It never ends. Each November storms circle the land from Dingle to Derry, Dundalk to Ring in a never ending cycle, Samhain to Lá Bríde; the hound howling, the Cailleach hot on his tail, stealing light from the sky with her never-ending hail of stones.

You can verify this account if you wish. The stones at Killeen Cormac are among the stones she has thrown; the hound’s footprints are in a boulder on Brewel Hill. The apples the goat scattered are the orbs of energy often appearing, still scattered, in photographs. The Púca’s antics are known all over Ireland and many are still recorded by unfortunates walking quiet roads late at night. Puck Fair is the yearly commemoration of the shape-shifter Púca*. And those great circles over Ireland, seen nightly on weather forecasts from September to February, are the chase as seen from the moon.



* The Cailleach is a Celtic deity, goddess of winter, also associated with earth formations, changing of the seasons, animals. She feature in many legends, in particular stories of her rivalry with Bríde, goddess of spring.

Púca (Phouka, Pooka) is a malevolent/mischievous/benevolent shapeshifter from Celtic folklore; a bringer of good, more often bad luck.

Spirals, Turnings at Newgrange

The sun enters the passage;

I meet him on my way;

he touches my head

like water.

I emerge into day;

in the chamber

the sun dwells a moment

on my earlier impressions.

I return after the day

to elaborate my carving,

my spirals,

my perpetual turning.

A Murmuration of Starlings

                           

Starlings swarming,

flashing inward, ballooning outward,

spiralling, spilling silver-bellied,
undulating darkness and luminescence,

rolling white underside upwards,

spooling, imploding, swallowing, exploding,

millioning out over the roofs, ribboning up,

each a light bulb switching, flicking,

flickering into unison, condensing into a score,
a billowing script,

a symphony inscribing itself across the heavens.