Broken Keys

The city traffic keeps going like a bicycle chain, and the clowns in the circus walk on giant

beach balls. I never look out the window, but it makes no odds, the thing keeps going.

Whoa, she played till the keys were flying off the piano like slates in a hurricane;

avalanche of blades in dust; will she be there when it stops, I wondered; she was, picking

crystals from a lunar landscape that, for all the world, were bits of her broken surface.

That night a meteorite, flashing across the sky, stopped above my house to wonder

where it was headed. In that few seconds, it lost its momentum, the flame went out

and I saw it no more.

The Fugitive

The one-armed man will arrive into town, most likely by train, the train runs two fields

behind the house, Kimble will be on his heals; he had that twitch that I worked on.

I would jerk my mouth into my cheek, I had it perfect, practised in front of the mirror;

especially if there’s girls around; no one would guess that there’s a secret press behind

the mirror; it’s got a nice smell; I often open it to get the smell. The grassland over the tracks

was the place for men that had to keep moving, I could lose myself there. Cowboys ride

that vast emptiness, stopping here and there to slake their thirsts; I like the way they sweat,

the Virginian sweats a lot. I know the water hole just beyond the line, there’s a tree there that

I kitted out as my fort; my stash of stones; indians and germans creep through the grass,

and indians crawl up the embankment to ambush the train over by the elder tree where I get

my swords. It would be hard to see them; you can get a good view standing on the buffer.

Jesus threatened to come off his cross at three o’ clock on Good Friday. Mam hated thunder,

we said the rosary during thunder storms; men on bicycles were always getting struck by lightening

over near Tremane. I’d go into the cubby hole under the stairs, past the box of polish tins into the pitch dark.
There was a door there that opened into a cave; I keep some secrets in the space under the cylinder
in the hot press; I don’t think anyone in the world knows that hiding place is there.

Resolution

Of course, across a lifetime, there are disappointments:

wrong choices of words or actions; misunderstandings,

misinterpretations, mistakes. I’m tired of old shadows

that belong to past, those I still drag into my days. Why

blight the present with regrets I’ve already entertained 

for too long. The next time they come to my door, they’ll

find it locked.

Better to be in the colour, light and life of now. To be

ravenous for all that is beautiful and uplifting, and be

sated. To be, all senses, full throttle; to shunt worries

up a siding, and be full express through the joys of life.

Life, the greatest gift, flies; I resolve now to fly in it.

October Leaves

October leaves on the footpath and pond

were galaxies, star-shaped maple;

colours of evening, hearth colours;

of a year whose duties have been seen to;

of hands when the deal is done.

Russet, reds, yellows, browns:

colours of contentment, of retiring.

In November they were rotting, blackening

in sodden heaps, turning rapidly back to humus,

my October stars. In December they were gone,

but had left hand-shaped traces all over the path,

waving back, those happy souls

The Four Strings On Her Violin.

A tunnel, in which she flitted like a bat with no more than a candle

and a breath of wind coming from somewhere further along,

where heart will explore in search of.............................................

of darkness; with limited life; search until pointlessness.

Second: a meteorites tail blazed across her face, made her magnificent.

All the faces in the auditorium were bulbs, all switched on, all magnificent;

and some cried, and the tears were seeds of her light.

Third, sandy beach: contrary, mix of gleam and dull gray; saw edge,

bilingual, grit between the strings, speckled, pocked. And its sharp edge

of sunlit sea.

Fourth, the arc of a day. From cumulus clouds down to the domes

and spires of the city, she flew time measured in the passing of the sun:

the sharpening and blunting of light. Clouds here and there interspersed

with the blueness of infinity, and day, the unit of our lives, lived in the

sound she was creating right there, in front of us.

In the Lagoon

Sun shining half-heartedly backwards into a sulky sky;

you may come upon me, lost in my beard,

drifting oarless in the lagoon, surrounded by trees

drooping listlessly into the water.

There may be a herring gull perched on my head

scanning the shore with avaricious intent

and perhaps a verse of poetry written to my memory,

in chalk, on the side of the boat:

‘He was a poet of meagre talent,

verbiage yes, rhyme he hadn’t.

Could pick an image, lacked rhythm;

just didn’t have it in ‘im.’

The Moon is a Blood Orange

The moon is a blood orange:

half devoured, rotting,

lolling just above the town.

A shade of Autumn ripeness,

of succulence

as Caravaggio might picture it.

Like a blown rose’s tarnished beauty,

like young love, its transience 
prompts a blissful melancholia.

Silver Birches

Today I came on a stand of birches

dazzling in late evening sunlight.

A tableau of, maybe, a dozen nudes;

splendid, shameless.

Torsos of Elginesque splendour,

arms twining upward in Grecian gracefulness;

statuesque beauties

nonchalant in Olympian lasciviousness.

Re-election in A Time of Death

A privilege of money: access,
access to everything.

To presidency?

Of course.

At what cost?

Cost?

A privilege of money:

the meaninglessness of this question.

Night Light

Night Light

Aerial photographs: night-light of the human sprawl,

cities’ cancerous creep.

Our web, spun across the globe,

corralling wildernesses, removing their essence;

grotesque with carcasses rotting in its threads

and its promise of a planet empty of all but us.

Blogging poetry in a time of Covid

I couldn’t finish my coffee without dealing with the houseflies circulating above the table. I just didn’t want them there. I got out a towel and starting at one end of the room and continuing to the open french doors on the opposite wall, I did a reasonable impression of a helicopter flying out of control with the kitchen towel. The plan seemed good, they were scattering, and I reckoned most of them would flee to the grander world outside. I closed the doors, returned to my coffee, and practically all of them returned to the place above my head.

That, of course, was a declaration of war. I got out the hoover, put on the small nozzle attachment and went after them with Miele know-how. They scattered in every direction, but not one disappeared into the hose, and so I’ve retreated into another room and am distracting my anger with this piece of prose.

Of course, none of this would be an issue if I wasn’t retired. For not quite a year now I have been an altered character; my role on this earth changed dramatically: I have become an almost full-time blogger poet. If I am not writing, I am considering what I might write about; I look at my surroundings and life as a reservoir for topics. I go searching for ideas like someone who was lost their keys in a meadow; I construct and abandon lines continually; re-envisage, re-edit, reword; sometimes resurrect some old poems, repackage, rework and on it goes. With all that time, I’m posting at least every second day (and that’s a rate I’d have advised against, but now writing is the wind in my sails, and I’m keeping them full).

So I sit in this room with all its windows, looking at a sizable swathe of County Donegal and beyond. It suits me very well, this life away from the demands of others, many of which didn’t sit very well with me. Alone with my thoughts congealing on the screen, particularly now, with the pandemic raging like an invisible storm. The blog prompts me to consider my experiences in a deeper way, particularly nature which now fills my view. A consideration of my recent poems shows the extent to which nature has filled my recent life, indeed, at times almost to the point of being overgrown.

Chunks of time spent in my own company, even without the restrictions due to covid, are, of course, necessary for  this writing. That’s the way it must be for poetry, a shortage of direct acclaim that explains why many poets crave live performance. I mention it because, in the grand spaces of time I now have, I would welcome feedback, comments and opinions; I would like other people's reactions to what I've written or how others might have reacted to the same sights and happenings. For me by the window, your comments might be a source of ideas and encouragement, an education in alternative views i.e. a widening of my perspective, and of course company.

The Old Man's Song

The old man loves to sing, but has a cracked voice;

when he sings he cracks the song;

a song not written for old men.

And the composer may, indeed, take umbrage, as singer,

word after word, loses footing on crumbling notes.

But the old man, singing his song,

takes his listeners along a less frequented path; he’s singing

defunct dreams, wispy happinesses, worries and triumphs.

Fissures open between the words, and there, sure enough,

is the other song: the song of life passing.

Finest Beauty

Sunray venus, angel wings, coquina;

conch, whelk, cockle, auger. Fine porcelain

finishes, classical symmetries, delicate markings,

exquisite colourings; nature’s artwork

abandoned, worthless litter, on the seashore.

But the greatest treasure is nowhere to be seen.

The finest human beauty is not the face;

and, as the oyster is no competition for most beautiful shell

though inside may be a pearl,

so too the human heart is hidden from the eye.

A Beautiful Place

A remote corner of a field, away from the traffic of feet

or wheels; where blackthorn, elder and briar have twisted

in old age into a tunnel sheltering a stand of primroses in

March, bluebells in May, foxgloves in July. A spring, an

unplumbable brown eye gazing out of the earth, a stream

taking its clear water to the fields.

A place where beauty does not demand awe nor wrench the

soul from your body, but finds its place within your soul.

A place you remember though have never been; that will

return to you at unexpected moments like memories of home.

The Sadness to September

The leaves growing old, drying like skin;

apples on the crab-tree red as tomatoes;

along the hillside, swathes of bronzed bracken;

a plait of smoke rising from a neighbour’s chimney.

The year on the turn: two days ago, swallows on wires,

on their starting blocks; they’re gone now.

There’s a sadness to September: a cool edge to its heat,

an extra length to its shadows, a ripeness

that is the beginning of the year’s rotting.