Slow-Moving Clouds

Slow moving clouds never ran away with love,

but left lovers dreaming in their wake.

The sky is where the hearts of lovers roam,

since the earth is not big enough for their dreams.

The baby in the tree

It's surprising where ideas come from. There  was a white carrier bag snagged high in a tree on Leinster Road.

         The baby in the tree

The baby in the tree

is screaming.

High above the pathway

near the black tips

of the sycamore branches

he is gaping,

white membraned luminous.

How did he get there?

He blew there in the wind;

it took him

like a flag from his cot

till he was stretched

across the boughs

like the wings of a bat.

And who sees him?

I do;

all his hopeless writhing,

too high for the passerby.

And his screams:

too high,

too high for the passerby.

The “Incredible Unsung Success”

Success was assured with the billions of dollars

I collected from my legions of followers.

And knowing there’d be tremendous amounts of water

I came totally prepared, in fact, did more than I ought ter.

At a photo-call that came from my own tremendous idea,

I kick-started the relief-effort for Hurricane Maria,

a performance par-excellence  ̶  let there be no disavowals  ̶

I still admire myself lobbing those paper towels.

When you pass

written with Karen McManus in mind.

When you pass,

cups miss mouths,

ladders slip,

buckets crash down,

cars veer,

cyclists swerve,

drunkards sober up,

poles and policemen collide,

business men miss kerbs,

schoolboys drool.

Me? I’m just your wing mirror,

enjoying the devastation

behind you.

In that love

Love made us lighter than air;

we careered, wheeled and banked

above the town.

Curved like quarter moons,

we fitted into each other precisely,

loved each other beyond norms;

freed ourselves.

In that love nothing hurts;

in that love all is healing;

in that love.

Jimi

These jets Thrill,

the notes Sear.

Arc of teeth

Bite my ears,

bleach the Sickles

Senseless.

Dum te dum te dum

In glorious Technicolor, breathtaking Cinemascope, magnificent

dum te dum te dum te dum stereophonic surround sound, Michael

lying on corrugated roof watching for Germans or Indians

crawling on their bellies through the tall grass of Glynn’s garden.

Eyes, pillbox slits. Sharp blades of grass quivering in June breeze;

or infiltrating dogs, enemies. Sounds, rustlings in the heat haze,

above the undergrowth, flicker in his eyes; sweeps the sweat

from his forehead beneath a blazing noon sun; endlessly patience,

tripwire-finger on trigger. It was the time of get that woman back

into the wagon, but Michael skipped last night’s soppy love scene

and is now the last one, the only one, still alive to defend O’Dea’s.

Failing Light

In the failing light of a November evening,

kicking through the rotting leaves on a suburban path,

I remember you, digging the garden ridges, shaking out

the groundsel, tossing the stones under the hedge.

Great events in your kingdom were scurryings in the grass,

a thrush feeding on a worm, raindrops falling from the apple trees.

Far from inspectors and reports, you held sway over

the straightening of ridges, regiments of onions and lettuces.

With each passing year, you are buried deeper beneath memory,

becoming ever more intangible, like these rotting leaves

that leave only their scent hanging in the dank November air;

after all this time, you have become more like a film I once saw.

Fail

My voice into the nowhere

Tailed off;

It almost reversed.

I looked there;

my nerve failed,

so I left.

That darkness

Hangs tauntingly over me;

It is my failure.

The Broken Bells of St Mary's

Saint Mary's church, Lubeck, Palm Sunday 1942.

The bells of the Marienkirche, still lying where they fell

Filled with air,

the bells floated

down;

like dandelion seeds,

sycamore seeds;

like thistle.

Like the bells,

the bombs fell

down;

like dandelion seeds,

sycamore,

thistle.

And soon enough 

all was quiet:

bombs,  bells,

 kirk;
and so too, I assume
the trumpets in Heaven.

.

The River Took Me

Once, in a sodden, flaggered field

beside the river,

the current took me;

not a canoe but a trout,

a water’s flint smoothed by its flow,

a ripple’s almond.

All sleekness and fluidity,

all instinct;

a lidless eye running,

seeing and discarding,

gorged on movement,

passing all argument.

Goddess of Winter, Cailleach

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.

Her Leaving

Film strip, a train’s windows.

Outside mine,

parents are straining for a last glimpse.

Embarrassed, she stares ahead.

The train moves, windows pass.

Outside the next,

mother is easing the glasses down her nose

to remove a tear.

At the next, husband’s arms around her,

and words, words, invisible words.

The train now gone from the platform,

a tail, a film strip flapping free.

I can’t fit you into my scheme of things,

nor you me,
now that we’ve finally become ourselves.

I turn on you sharper than a scalpel,
choose words shaped to torture.

Out from beneath the quilt of affection,
we, our naked selves so vicious,

bruise ourselves with the same fervour
that once marked our loving.

Coping, Not Coping

You screamed; no one heard.
You wondered if you had screamed at all.

I asked you where the lines on your face came from;
another line appeared.

Now, because your eyes are perpetually electrocuted,
I talk on and on;

always taking the precaution of being somewhere else
before I stop.