International Incident in Local Pub

Early twenties, long fair hair, blue-jeaned, Dutch I'd guess. Camping on the beach probably; sitting now with her travelling companion at the next table. 

I’m in the only bar in the locality, Friday night, thronged with locals enjoying the weekly music. The two girls have a different style, they’re noticed, but that’s the height of it; you get summer visitors in these parts.

At the bar, shimmying, the local Ronaldo. Thirty-five-ish, pint in one hand, massaging roll of  belly between tee-shirt and jeans with the other; he’s outlining a game-plan to three acolytes: ‘gwan horse!’ 

But the girl’s spread-eagled on his cross hairs and the performance is for her. He’s watching, every few minutes his eyes travelling over to her table.

And suddenly he’s off to her table. He’s full-sail on the open sea, and that’s noticed too, but that’s the height of it.

He asks her to dance.

On the dance floor he’s doing a jive-waltz-dribble sort of thing, interrupted occasionally to lob the odd word down her ear-hole. There’s twirl, lots of twirl, and twinkling feet; the locals know the story, little smiles on their faces, the pair are the only ones dancing.

Back at the bar, anticipation-pricked, he’s warming the lads; shimmies becoming daintier, more intricate like; he calls another pint......and a glass.

The glass crosses the floor, the pint with it.

Stool patted, down goes the arse and it’s chat, chat, chittidy, chattedy, chit-chat; he massages his belly and then another pint.

“Glass ?”

“No thanks.”

 Back at the bar, horn-filled, brimmin; Rono, ya beauty!

But they bolt. The two girls gone. The discovery takes a moment or two. 

He roars, runs after them,  across the lounge, out the door, slams it shut; leaves the lads scattered, astounded feathers behind him.

And the music, as they say, played on.

Late Afternoon in a Different Time

Late Afternoon

The sky was ablaze with gorse,

I played hide and seek on the tracks between

till a high wind tired of that, so I took the boat out onto the lake,

went fishing for pike.

Countries changed into dogs, bears, ugly guys with misplaced noses;

I looked at the hills, they were wreathed in white thorn,

then turning onto my stomach, I let the sun lie on my back

while I read a little, Treasure Island.

The swallows were wheeling over Wyoming canyons;

I shifted in my rocky lair, but could see no indians coming;

there was a stirring under the palm tree,

and a spider walked up my arm, I watched him for awhile;

he had made a scrawny web of Italy so I blew on him

and the sun moved toward five.

I could see the burst football was not about to play,

so I poked my finger into the blue and looked at it with one eye shut;

the sun was a scorching white ball that no one could look at directly;

I mopped the sweat from my forehead and drained my canteen dry,

then turned onto my side. There were blossoms on the apple trees

and a voice like metal came through the privet hedge.

The voice was calling tea-time; a familiar voice to be sure,

but an escapee from another sky.

Spring Music

Kay’s at the window playing concertina to the Bluestacks,

Clar, Donegal town and the sea, a grinning guitar string beyond.

The wind’s taken up the rhythm, playing the birches;

and the pampas plume, no dancer himself, is jinking to and fro;

a kill-joy stem jerking him earthward over and over.

There are birds on the wires  spaced like a code, clouds perched 

between them in shades of white to cream, ivory and pearl.

A plume of smoke rising diffuse in some distant trees

is solidifying, where the sky begins, into molar Ben Bulben,

and all is plush and wonderful in Spring’s fresh greenery.

Giorria

Noiméad ar a shuaimhneas,

ina thiarnas ciúin, folamh.

Go tobann ag ropadh tríd an scrobarnach

mar a bhí mé í láthair.

Draíocht an nóiméid,

é ina shuí ina áit féin,

imníoch, ach an méid atá nádúrtha dó

í dtús Aibreáin, é ar faire ar chnocán féarmhar.

Agus draíocht a éalú,

an aclaíocht sin agus an diongbháilteas;

treo áirithe aige, an cinneadh agus an bhogadh

déanta ar an bpointe.

Transl.

Hare

One moment at ease,
in his quiet empty dominion.
Suddenly flashing through the undergrowth
because I am present.

The magic of the moment,
him sitting in his own place,
anxious, but the amount that is natural to him
at the beginning of April, him on the lookout on a grassy hillock.

And the magic of his escape,
the agility and the single-mindedness;
a particular direction, the decision and the movement
made in an instant.

I love You

This is an updated version of a poem I posted about two years ago.

I love you

The chives’ purple heads standing on their bottle-green stalks

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

beyond them, on the hillside opposite, the soft pile forestry

was our wealth, 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 this chain of beauty; and then I said, ‘I love you.’

It was not just the moment, but the magnificence we were part of;

happiness was bubbling,  the words came like breaking into a song.

Childhood.

A cloudscape that forms and deforms

one carefree afternoon when you’re in your back garden.

A warm sun; lying on your back gazing at the sky;

change as remote as care.

But infinite time that it is, it flashes by,

childhood changing shape without ever having had a shape.

Minnows

Compass needles

in current,

still

as thought.

Flint arrows,

they darted linear,

abrupt angles sparked

and quenched

Euclidian

in execution.

Dunbrody Abbey

If whole, Dunbrody Abbey would be astonishingly beautiful.

As ruin, it stands, vestige of a medieval past, stripped of context;

its magnificence magnified by isolation, a gemstone outcrop

in a pasture, now lichened to the colours of the Irish sky.

Occasional flourishes in the stonework coax imagination’s

wooden scaffolds, ladders, ropes and pulleys to be assembled:

ribs must fan across vaulted ceilings, capitals must crown the columns,

grotesques and gargoyles must emerge, trespassers from the walls.

And though a melancholy breath pervades the ruined passages and doorways

from the devastation wrought by men, now smoothed by centuries’ weathering,

and the ceiling of sky that portends change and the eventual passing of all things,

its splendour prevails, and like sun dazzling on water, the old walls enchant.

Eternal

Rivers running over the land:

slivered sky and light
tress-like;
fish and ripples one,

alive.

Clamouring in high places,

lisping in low;

spry in youth,

sedate in age;

always journeying to their end

to run again.