Bird Bones and poetry

AvantAppal(achia) 5 is now online; it gives me the perfect reason to repost this photo; see why at https://www.avantappalachia.com/ 

Number 6 is due in December. The submission details can be found at the above address.

Childhood, religion, fear.

Sunfire

sunset raging in the western sky meant

Hell was out of control beyond the Galway Road.

Clouds, carrying the flames eastward,

threatened our house.

I, scared witless, kept my head under the blankets,

knowing God’s sun had been swallowed by that fire. 

I heard a fly buzz

"I heard a Fly buzz – when I died – 

………………………………– and then

I could not see to see –"

                                           Emily Dickinson

There was a time when the tv picture, turned off,

Diminished to one bright spot on the screen,

Lingered awhile, then quenched.

All that action condensed into one bright spot;

I marvelled and dwelt on it and saw it out.

How magnificent that last buzz must be?

How marvellous the smallest manifestation of life!

How magnificent that last stirring of life:

She turned her head, her head;

She turned her head.

I Love You

The purple heads of the chives standing on their bottle-green stalks

were June’s bright soldiers above the dun-coloured sandstone;

beyond them, the soft pile forestry of the opposite  hillside

was a kind of wealth to us, especially in the rich glow of evening sun.

I moved closer to you; held out my hand to find yours already there,

to be links in a chain with this beauty; and then I said, ‘I love you.’

It was not just the moment; it was the magnificence of the view below us;

I needed something that grand to put the words into.

Beads of Rain

Beads of rain made blinking eyes of the water,

thousands of strings unravelled, the pond filled,

became agitated.

It was for this I came to the park. To see the day crease,

to assure myself that your death would not pass unnoticed.

The day was a dark mood but the strings transported the sky’s light

into the pond’s sulking despondency,

and suddenly I was feeling better.

Old Man

Oh, that’s not who he is,

age is just the cap on his head.

And cranky: it’s what he’s been holding

since youth, his rebellion.

We should listen, but, only the old can know

what the old know.

Love then

I’ll be somewhere far away by then.

The silhouettes are for you;

they are the silhouettes of us as lovers.

There were stars all around;

they’re still there,

but we  moved on.

Street Dweller

He lives in a doorway,

finds privacy facing away from the street;

his back is his outside wall.

Prayer at a soldier’s grave

Lord,

You created this young man to do Your will

wherever righteous  politicians may send him;

to loose his bullets into other young men

sent by other politicians, who, seeing the thing

otherwise, also uphold what is right.

His intelligence and strength used to cull those

most like himself, serving country.

I pray that this transubstantiation of body to stone slab

pleases You  as it has pleased those who sent him,

who have much to gain from his sacrifice.

The Havoc of Climate Change Already Here

Leaving the climatic effects of global warming to one side, the geopolitical ramifications are truly scary.  Take a short while to listen to Professor Jennifer Leaning  in this BBC podcast, Climate Change and Me:  https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b3fkps

     

A life alone

No one lives with the moon, no one could;

the moon is beautiful, too beautiful;

a sentence to loneliness.

Night after night, wandering, catching glimpses 

  of lovers through half-pulled curtains, it loiters 

to glare on their passions with arctic disdain.

Then scurries onward through the forests of the sky,

to recover its empty heaven,

the solitude that freezes its heart.

A View Upward

Two swallows, pencil points on the ends of mathematical compasses,

wheeling in a smoky blue sky, took me with them; a sort of freedom.

Lying, watching the sky think, composed of  nothing but separating atoms,
I, you might say, was reassembled in the magnificence of that one moment.

Exhilaration,  a reassembling of the way I thought, sent me cascading outward,

Napalm.

            

           (a poem about distance)

            Nice to feel the sun on your back,

            cool yourself down in the sea;

            watch the girls on the beach:

            beautiful bodies.

            Nice too, the sounds of the seaside:

            a speed-boat buzzing, 

            the tide washing onto the sand,

            children screaming.

On Murvagh Beach

There’s so little difference between sea and cloud

that the whole scene might as well be upside down,

with the bisectors of St John’s Point, a finger stretching

across the horizon, and Mullagmore, a finger, Adam’s to God,

reaching back. To the left, white clouds are hanging,

sheets from a bed, down the sides of Ben Bulben; to the right

the Bluestacks are slumped  beneath mosquito nets of rain.

Smokey light is filling the bay like ether, lulling the world,

so waves that have raced across the ocean, surviving the fury

at Rosnowlagh, now collapse, spent, onto the sand.

Murvagh beach, pooled with clouds we’re walking through;

two silhouettes moving along the bottom edge of a canvas now cause

 a tin of paint to splatter upward: a bevy of oystercatchers taking to flight.

Riverrun

Riverrun over the land:

slivered sky and light,

spindly bodies flowing,

fish and ripples one,

alive.

Clamouring in the high places,

lisping in the  low.

Spry in youth,

sedate in old age;

always journeying to their end

to run again.