Emptied

 

Emptied.

The house.

Home.

Gone.

Those years.

That life.

Numb.

The walls.

Myself.

Fork in the Road

 

Page:

a confessional, a dilemma;

what will I say

dear blankness?

Somehow a page is too white to be truthful,

and fiction is a betrayal;

every time I confront the white page,

I 'm at the fork in the road before honesty.

Life

 

A stone skimmed across the water pauses a moment

to imagine wings.

In the same moment a mayfly, among half a million

wings flickering golden sunlight,

is gathered into the jaws of a granite-speckled trout.

A man in an artist’s workshop is studying the camed

window of a mayfly’s wing, marvelling at its beauty

at the same moment; the trout’s teeth crushes the wings

that flickered golden sunlight.

The stone sinks.

At Lough Eske

 

I am part of a lake becalmed. Sitting here, oak woods my collar,

feet paddling November leaf litter, mind deep in the reflection

of tree trunks; further out, the tracery of their ash grey branches

grading to the cumulus ruminations of an overcast Donegal sky.

I am among those branches, an intricacy of neurons, still as a blackbird

considering the world from a height; song silent now, but full inside;

I am among those trunks, quiet nimble-eyed fox peering out from shadows,

brimming with the present but with only the faintest gleam off my scales.

The Walls of Inis Oirr

Among Ireland's most beautiful and impressive sights are the limestone walls of Inis Oirr. Fields paved with  karst limestone cleared to a labyrinthine landscape that's just incredible to behold. The walls for the most part fall into two categories of construction: lace walls and Feiden walls. You can get a good description of these walls at https://www.amusingplanet.com/2015/04/the-stone-walls-of-ireland.html

The Walls of Inis Oirr

How these walls speak, like poetry, of the land and its people;

how carefully the stones, like words, chosen to fit,

how beautiful their construction, coloured to their place.

The stone that paved the fields, now brimming with sky;

the lace walls of Inis Oirr, nets for seaweed fertiliser,

alive with limestone clouds chasing powder blue patches

across stanzas laden with western light, air and water.

Or feiden walls with their tightly packed words leaning left,

then right; words rhyming with themselves and their landscape;

for all the world, like a singsong on a bus coming late-night from

the pub, as close to merry as ever a poem could ever be, and still

following the lilt of the land as Yeats might have dreamed it.

Dog-eared Memory

 

Your face distorted

through the rain-running glass;

shop lights

flowing down your hair and shoulders;

the harsh neons,

the dull tungsten tea-coloured;

Main Street mermaid circa 1967,

the town a cascading shawl.

When I search through the files,

the dog-eared memories; thumb right through

to the darkest corners of my mind,

that’s all I can find of you.

When Snow is Melting

 

When the snow is going,

time is melting;

think deforming clocks.

Spoons stretching their necks

into slime thin slimness

craning downwards,

examining where to

drop

with silver spherical absorption

and cup hooks

with feelings, straining

to hold onto water.

Speaking to Alzheimer's

 

When words fail,

sing;

magnet

for all those filings,

splintered thoughts;

sing the lasso

of a familiar song,

draw in those fond memories

together.

At her Dying

 

In memory of my mother

What to say, what words to pick;

words so freely scattered, now

that she was breathing fitfully, within

minutes of leaving her life,

leaving those she loved for the love

she had prayed all her days,

and these words, if she could hear,

the last words she would ever hear.

How we struggled to find a way of saying

we love you, be happy to be journeying,

approaching the God of her life-long devotion.

How to put love, comfort, encouragement

into uncertain, dismayed voices;

to put words that were special from us to her.

Her breathing weaker now, and our voices

hopefully reaching through the fog in her head;

our voices the last sounds before her space-travel.

What words to send with her, if they could be heard;

our company to the threshold, and beyond;

warmth to carry into the unknown.

Spears of Mountain Grass

 

Spears of mountain grass bronze tipped

and edged, grading to gold, to green;

tufts splayed like ceremonial headdresses,

gleaming in the already golden sunlight,

resplendent.

Bowled over by the glories I’d missed,

with narrower eye, I see patches of azure sky

along the track, yellow-green grasses combed

smooth by rushing flood water in culverts,

silver-glinting mica in the siding rocks,

magnificent.

Beneath the mountains, the rain-reflected gleam

of low sun into my eyes is a celebration

of the bejewelled growth along the wayside,

the play of light, water and mountain breezes

dizzying, fire-working my senses into exhilaration,

and profound joy.

Ambition

 

Love found us sleeping with multiples

of ourselves

as we divined

all of us that we are, strove towards

all we could be,

and, imagining the best we could never be,

endeavoured to be those too.

It Blurs

 

What I didn’t expect:

it all blurs.

What a rare ol’ time it was:

blurred;

what closeness:

blurred;

what excitement:

blurred.

How tight we were;

what nights we had;

what we wouldn’t have done;

what we wouldn’t have done for each other;

it blurs;

all of it blurs.

Deforestation

 

Deforestation:

another cancer-ridden lung,

its blackening tissue,

from the air,

ugly as any tumour,

as aggressive a cancer

as would cause any patient

to stop.

Sense Action Being

 

Tiger rests, tongue slakes flames,

zen-like in shadow patch

beneath over-arching fronds;

when earshot goes click,

eyesight opens in coin flick,

Tiger, sunlight in leaves,

silent on padded paws

muscle tide carpeted,

sense, action, being, crouched

in cave opening of eyes;

springs sheltered beneath fangs

gush bright silver streams,

Tiger turns dreamy.

Imagining

 

imagine

the dim muddy sunlight that filters into lake water

imagine

those perfectly round, olive green leaves drifting by

trailing their spiralis stems behind them

imagine

bubbles here and there rising like nascent stars innately

aware of the presence of sky

imagine

in that place, a man drifts by, a ripple of life with a vague light

from half open eyes

imagine

his love similarly, lying on his back as they flow, her eyelids

heavy like his

imagine

the depth’s silence caressing their bodies with luxurious density

imagine

their eyes see you as they pass, but regard you as incidental as

any sight along their way

imagine 

that oneness, close your eyes and think of it