She came to test me.*

Did her hair flow bright as honey down her back? 

Was the wild rose the blossoming of her cheeks? 

Or, was her face was a web of soil-filled furrows?  

Were her eyes flinty with the cunning of age?  

  

I passed the test of kingship, I did not falter; 

She came old into my eyes, but was young in my arms, 

With fingers flowing gently over my temples,  

Breath sweet in the full bloom of her mouth, 

Voice rich as the blackbird’s on the highest branch of an oak.  

For a king must be one with the spirit of the land 

whether it be dressed in the bare, haggard bones of January,  

or the lush green coat bejewelled in May. 

*The high kings of Ireland had to lie with (or marry) the Hag to show that they were beyond being seduced 

by the easy things in life.

Blue-veined old hands :

I never saw them coming

till they were spread bleak

as the limbs of Winter trees

across vacant heavens.

When I said I loved you

I whacked at the wall

with a stick of oar weed

picked off the strand.

Cantankerous old fool :

never saw him coming

till words I spat out

fell like lightning turned

to twigs of rotten wood.

New Poem

I have set myself up to write a poem

and am sitting set before the screen

and

Forgetting

Mosaic of sunlight,

gold and russet leaves;

becalmed now in memory loss.

A moment:
another leaf falling

with a sound that is not heard.

That pile of  leaves growing;

the heartbreak:

soon this maple will be bare.

The Stars

The stars are tossed across the drumlins of the sky.

I am looking to see the road you’ve taken

And I think I see it, and  you;

Andyou are singing Bring back my Bonnie

And you are laughing, and looking back

Over your shoulder.  Yes I think you are.

And now I am singing; we’re all singing

Bring back my Bonnie, and the road is getting longer

Behind us, and you are handing back sweets, and I ‘m smiling

And you sing Ten Green Bottles; we  all sing

Between the rolling fields of night, and then

You have rounded some bend, and are singing,

But smaller and smaller and smaller and
and I cannot see

just the stars.

Once by the Sea

Once I sat by the sea around midnight

with too much drink in my gut,

watching the play of tide and moonlight

crash into a crescent of land;

the rhythm of the waves hitting my oozy brain

like ‘This is Your Life’.

I stayed there to discover what it was telling me;

to distil a loneliness

that would inform me about myself.

The light and sound and smell of the sea and shore,

the darkness behind me, the round sky,

and myself tight as a nut at its centre.

I stayed there long enough to imagine myself lonely,

confirm my right to be on those stirring stones,

to be clear sighted beyond sight,

to implicate the world, the universe, and yourselves

in the unhappiness of my moment;

and I was intensely happy.

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.