A Poor Man Offers Unlimited Treasure

It’s a paltry thing that sparkler on your finger,

when, on a sunny morning, I will present you

with ten miles of dazzling lake almost to the door.

Or an emerald, when my house is sitting at the bottom

of blazing green fields, and the same all the way to the sea,

two counties to the west, three to the east.

Or amethyst, when the boreen is crowded with foxgloves

ringing their bells for the attention of bumble bees who’ll be losing

their heads in nectar from May to September.

Or rubies, when the hedges are brimming with myriad constellations

of fuchsia; even the ash, high on the hill, outshines them with its harvest

of late evening sun gathered in sprays of blood-bright berries.

And that gold bangle on your wrist, how dull it will look beside the daffodils

under the beech trees not a hundred yards from my house, or June’s irises

with blooms like laughter among the flaggers opposite Scanlon’s old shed.

Over by the privet hedge, you’ll have all the pearls you could wish for

come the end of January; snowdrops, promising the year’s beauty,

will be yours every January, if only you’d come live in my cottage.

Pike

In mid-nave, pike levitates;

half way between floor and roof,

still as a crucifix,

tarnished mail dim in the Gothic gloom.

Spear-head forward,

cast to its medium,

pike eschews all knowledge

but its knowledge of being.

Blue Sky

where we empty the clocks,

drain time

and fly,

wheel happiness, glide happiness,

spool the sun,

skim fingertips

along the ocean’s rim,

gather ice sopranos

from the stratosphere’s crystal beds,

dissolve into pure air,

harvest the ecstasy seeds that dream there,

soar in the winds’ songs,

surf sunlight’s beams,

learn the treasure of empty pockets.

Our Spoon

Child’s hand extending for food,

his skeleton entirely visible;

inside, a heart flat-out pumping

like a fish gasping in a net;

how desperate his heart?

Camera sees, thinks heart and clicks,

swallows child whole,

then asks for more.

Mirror Image

She looks at herself,

and, rather than passing on,

remains in front of herself,

returning her stare

returning her stare.

Time has scribbled on her face,

the script has halted her;

intrigued, horrified,

she has stopped to read

she has stopped to read.

Time’s graffitti has betrayed her,

she sees her story on her face:

time vandalised her beauty;

she turns away

she turns away.

Corporate World

The dull paths of our lives:

sat at desks, endlessly clocking up

corporation minutes, whose sponge-like

insatiability drives us through our days;

propellers rotating at the speed of

managers’ whims; incentivized with

carrots of preferment, in fact, further

enmeshment in their cogs, deeper commitment

to the captivity; to become a presenter

of the starving statistics, those graphs

with ever-widening jaws hidden behind

the oh so convincing lines.

And you,

with family, far away, withering in the drought

of your time, the young imaginations fired

by the lightning flashes of the natural world

doused by your distracted interest,

your removal from their wonders.

And the inevitable hook from your carriage

onto your world of office, desk and air-conditioned

ambitions, your soft-padded shuffle through life,

your highs and lows doled out by those

who have experienced the thrills of more spacious offices.

Baking

The flour falling from her fingers

‒ into the child’s memory ‒

and her fingers coated in flour.

Reacting with her skin,

tomorrow her hands will be red,

raw and sore;

and still there will be fresh bread for the table.

Nature Done and Dusted

Lough Eske, carelessly thrown beneath the Bluestacks;

if my mother was here, she’d say ‘pick that up, fold it and put it away.’

And how do you think Lough Eske would look folded into a rectangle?

‘Tidy’ she’d say (I’m doing her a disservice mentioning her here),

but tidier still behind an interpretive centre with paved walkways,

playground, benches, coffee shop, garbage bins, signposts,

parking spaces for buses, tourism statistics on an ever-ascending curve,

local politicians queuing for photographs beside  ‘Lough Eske Recreation Park’.

International Conferences, brochures, signposts to the future:

Namibian Dune-Surfing, Amazonian Canopy Adventures;

the whole wild world folded into neat tidy rectangles;

explorers lined up three-deep at the ticket kiosk.

The Colour of Her Eyes

Low tide,

a vast expanse of strand

extends to the distant shallow sea;

its shade barely more than the memory of blue

and one bright line.

Two people walking there

remind me of a past happiness;

too far out to leave more than an impression,

too long ago to be sure of what I’m remembering;

but those eyes, I’m definite about the eyes.

Watching snow fall

into an already snow-covered garden

is so similar to the experience of sadness

that it is utterly compulsive

Void

less than

desert or wilderness;

less

than nothingness

is the void from loss.

Something scooped out,

removed,

a diminution.

Loss

irrecoverable, lamented.

Playing Granny’s Old Piano.

When I was young I used to play that jangly old piano;

the notes went round and round the insides of the instrument

like I was playing in an empty hall or in a canyon.

In those days I had some ancestors still living,

who, multi-coloured birds all, perched high up on the escarpments,

listened, and encouraged with calls that blossomed in my ears,

blossom still; rare blooms, I didn’t know that then.

I will never out-perform the Michael that played for them.

I listen to this album to hear those notes; the old hall, jangly piano;

high up, wisps of old birds still cling to protruding ledges;

higher again, the sky squats, tone-deaf and waiting.

Inside the dark places

Inside the dark places

between the branches of trees,

grass plants in the meadows,

crevices in walls,

beneath floorboards,

under the stones on the beach,

grains in soil.

What strange formations,

unlikely growths, exotic creatures,

unexpected confluences;

flashes of light, strange stirrings,

fearsome predators,

unexpected symbioses:

the world is full of unexplored wildernesses.

So I sit here

So I sit here in Arrivals

waiting for ideas:

hedged-in country roads, taking the poetic route,

meandering around drumlins, ponds, farms;

scarves of air-borne sand,

whole beaches streaming like signals pouring

out of short-wave radios;

arrogant jet trails whose firm purpose and direction

dissipate in lamentable short-term memory;

desert highways

where wisps of Merle Haggard

catch like wool on the roadside scrub;

ideas borne on words, carriages on wheels;

so I sit here in Ideas

waiting for arrivals.

A Young Woman's Death

Her young body and beautiful face

laid out;

and the file of mourners grabbing

for metal girders inside their heads

to steady their consternation.

None of us there had ever seen young beauty

dead;

as the people passed,

their eyes flicked like window-blinds,

and all were suddenly disabled.

I searched for words:

could I say how beautiful she looked

or what a waste of a life?

The silence of her closed eyelids filled the room;

there was no space for words.