Only Once Since.

in memory of my mother

When, on an April afternoon,

the countryside was bathed

in pristine  sunlight

And the fields were roaring their green

And the sky above was shifting along

with the most breath-taking speed,

I saw you on the river

And you were happiness

Complete and utter.

I recognized you

Because you would have known that was the way

To send the message.

And, there and then, both of us knew

You would never 

 send another.

The Poems Are Past.

The poems are past;

goodnight, au revoir.

And life, handed over like a cheque;

good luck, all the best.

Still: an adjective for a man ?

Still ?

Think of rain, bucketing down,

sunshine caught in its strings;

that's how I think of you:

a rainstorm in June; gentle subversive .

The Angel and St Feichín

Readers of my blog will be getting familiar with St Feichín by now; I, myself, have taken a great fondness to this 7^th century Irish saint. 

He’s got all the powers of a super-hero without the noise of contemporary technology around him; he’s the perfect, early Christian, Jedi master. But better than that, he had all the wonderful traits: abstinent, pleasant, charitable, powerful, emaciated, just-worded, honest, pious, rich in sense, godly, affectionate, discreet, opportune, wise, prayerful………………………………………………..( from a medieval document via a seventeenth century rewriting); yet he was wonderfully contrary, when called back to confront St Ciaran, he walked backwards so as not to look him in the face. And, guess what, he died from a plague, he himself called down.

So here's my version of his call to convert the pagans of Omey.

The Angel and St Feichín

One night a very large bird settled on the roof of the cell in which St Feichín was sleeping; this event occurred at Easdara in the present day County Sligo.

Still there at dawn, the brilliance of the early sun reflecting off its magnificent plumage caused a crowd to gather. And as the morning progressed the crowd swelled further, to such a size, in fact, that their tumult distracted the saint who was at the time in a transport brought on by the deepest meditation. And so, it was not with little annoyance that he emerged from his hut to inquire as to why such a large crowd had gathered in that spot.

When the extraordinary bird saw Feichín, it started up a jabbering that amazed all those who were there. Feichín, for his part, recognizing the bird as a gannet, and knowing that they never travelled so far inland, moved closer to listen and soon found himself conversing in a language, the like of which he had no previous knowledge.

All marvelled at the bird: its gleaming white plumage, the extent of its wings whose span was greater than the width of the cell, the fierce grey eyes which never ventured from the saint’s face, its insistent natter.

The conversation continued for two hours; an engagement between man and bird that had the mouths of all present gaping like the black caves in the hills to the south. Never once were they deflected by the milling of the crowd around them nor stop to wet their throats nor, even once, did the flow of their communication wane.

And then, quite suddenly, around noon, to the amazement of all, the gannet rose with a great pumping of its wings, followed by Feichín who rose from the ground like a leaf gathered up in a gale. Into the sky, side by side, growing smaller and smaller, eventually two black dots like stars that went out, the gannet and Feichín disappeared into the clouds travelling in a southwest direction.

All those that gathered fell to their knees and, as one voice, emitted a howling that was partly extolment of the greatness of God and Feichín, partly lamentation at the taking of their saint.

But it was that same day that Feichín landed on the brightly flowered sward of Omey, and it is since that day that the people of Omey have their faces turned to the one God.

Flight Mechanism

I found a bird

dismantled;

a pair of wings,

still feathered,

on an axis of miniature bones.

Only yesterday,

this anatomical array

imparted the capability of flight.

Head, legs, belly

removed;

I found it,

like a daVinci investigation,

a perfect isolation of the relevant parts.

Life, trains you choose

Life, trains you choose:

hop on, hop off, forget to;

and still no matter how many

you take, you’re only ever in

one carriage,

only ever in the one you’re in.

We could string this out, couldn’t we:

long-distance, short-distance, circle lines;

the country singers have done it all already;

it does strike me though,

the more trains you take,

the less direction you have.

Berry Picking

On a windy day I could hear the conversations speeding through the phone wires:

Roscommon to Dublin, Roscommon to Galway, the Dublin express thrumming through.

I would stand below them,  listening, waiting for one word to fall, mercury-drop perfect,

down past the briars, dog roses, blackthorns, elders, into the can of the young boy’s ear.

Peninsula

A peninsula: shingle, cockle and barnacle shells, strips of desiccated wrack,

greened with sea-holly. The wooden cabin, though frequently lashed with spray,

was salted dry, and coloured somewhere between bone and limestone;

I lived there for five months before you came.

From the land our light seemed no more than a single candle burning;

the clothes on our line had the appearance of  rags,

and the smoke from our fire curled into the sky with a nonchalance

that suggested our daily struggles with lighting washed up timbers.

You’ll remember the shingle made walking difficult; with each step the stones rolled.

You said it sounded like the grinding of a mouth full of loose teeth; but, around the bay,

 a billion stones rolled thunderously with each beached wave;

and the  breeding terns came at us like boomerangs.

Nights: we were  unlit stars perhaps, but at one with the universe, free and alive

 in the unbroken expanse of shore, sea and sky; we had  space

 to be colossal, to exhilarate; and moonlight, our spotlight to roar songs into the cosmos,

to take the universe’s light into our eyes and exult in it.

Came the day of migration: wings outstretched, muscles fluid, necks craned to our separate
destinations; we, without backward glances, took to the air

with eyes big enough to countenance the curve of the earth, greedy enough to fly it;

and left our peninsula, a finger  pointing to somewhere .

Inheriting The Land.

  Emigration seems to be a never-ending feature of Irish life. This poem  is rooted in the Ireland of my childhood.  The boat then had the effect a little death for those left behind.

Inheriting The Land.

Here the sea is no more than a sigh in a shell,

conversations speed past, pole high, Dublin to Galway

and music is the wind whistling beneath a door.

Slightness describes Summer's step,

stonework its skies; a little light drips

from its edges but it's falling from a miser's hand.

Across the fields the church, within its necklace

of dead congregations, is a rusty hinge;

a place filled with a century's stillness.

And the ivy-choked trees lean closer together

like old men guessing at each others' words.

If you were to fly over these patchwork hills,

along the hedgerows and through the lightless haggarts,

you'd never meet a soul. The old farmers are sitting

in their twilight kitchens, their families standing

on the mantelpiece in the other room that's never used

with faces tanned beneath American skies.

Only the din of crows seeps into that silence;

crows more numerous than leaves on the sycamores,

always bickering, hogging the light,

building their cities, staking their inheritance.

Biblical Truth

Don’t look to a rich man to loosen anyone’s chains;

wealth has seldom been amassed with empathy for the impoverished.

Crumbs from the rich man’s table are still the staple;

it’s as it’s always been: easier for a camel to get though the eye of a needle

than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.

Plenty Jazz No Poetry

All the words  rushing,

propelling themselves, toppling over each other

like water through a sluice,

conveying no meaning

beyond their own chaotic flow.

Stand there with a bucket refusing to fill;

the words raining out,

ricochetting with that uncontainable energy

away from shape

like iron filings defying a magnet.

Where What

I am in a place I don’t recognize.

Alone.

There is a country that has left me.

I don’t have a compass.

And if I did I do not believe it would find

me.

There is no point in yelling

this far out to sea.

Besides, I appear to have lost my voice.

Heartlands Writers Event Cancelled

Unfortunately ‘The Heartlands Writers’ event due to take place this Saturday, 14^th Sept, has had to be cancelled.  I am hopeful that one or more literary events will take its place  in  the coming year. 

Reminder: Workshops and Readings in Roscommon

HEARTLANDS WRITERS

with JANE CLARKE, BRIAN LEYDEN and MICHAEL O’ DEA

A celebration of writers from the Hidden Heartlands with an afternoon of masterclass workshops followed by an evening’s miscellany of words and music in Roscommon Arts Centre.

2pm: Registration

2.15pm – 3pm: Readings and Workshop Introductions.

3.15pm – 5pm: Workshops

The Arts of Metaphor: Acclaimed poet Jane Clarke will look at the role of metaphor in creative writing. Participants are invited to come with a favourite poem or a few lines of prose where they find the metaphor/s exciting, intriguing or moving.

Write On: Author Brian Leyden will bring his expertise to guide and encourage participants to write with a fresh eye, a clearer sense of personal style, and a new confidence.

Sculpting a Poem from the Rough Block: Michael O’Dea, poet and teacher of creative writing, will facilitate writers in the fining of their work and follows the complete process of a writing a poem.

7pm – 8.30pm: Literary Miscellany.  Enjoy a series of readings from Jane, Brian and Michael interspersed with musical interludes.

SATURDAY 14th SEPTEMBER | €15 Workshops | €15 Literary Miscellany | €25 Workshops & Literary Miscellany

Me Today

My brain is on a pole approximately 80cm from my head;

there’s a dull ache in its place, and my thoughts are crossing the gap

                         at greatly reduced speeds.

My eyes are transmitting from a station on a nearby hill;

everything is drawn with broad black outline, so each object is more its shape

                                                                                   than itself.

My ears, however, are firmly in their place, and appear to have evolved

to the point that I am aware of collisions in the remotest regions of the universe;

            this, to me, is particularly unsettling.

Passing

Dusty light falling through the trees,

their apple-laden branches,

settling on the tall grass, thriving nettles,

is sealing the orchard in a kind of torpor.

.

The fat apples, awaiting the picking that will not come,

avow, as light the darkness around it,

our transience:

time and purpose.