A Moment Between Lovers

 

Kisses her closed eyelids, cheeks;

breathes warmly into the well of her ear,

catches the lobe between his teeth,

gently pulls; runs opened lips slowly

downward to her shoulder; she shivers;

counts the vertebrae of her neck with the tip

of his tongue, and beneath the collar of her blouse;

a lizard with electric feet scuttling down

the length of her spine; she opens her eyes;

a momentary shimmering of the air between her

and the window, then focussing, looks out onto

the field like the small exhilarations of her skin

are blooming there; his arms around her,

his fingertips kissing her still.

The Poet

 

His was a wintry man;

life bent him crabbed

like a thorn tree near the ocean,

shaped to gnarled contrariness.

He was a thorny man;

drink sharpened his anger,

kept his lightning bolts charged,

loose as the change in his pocket.

He was a raggedy man,

ripped by the snags that held him;

only his poetry escaped,

blazing like the gorse in June.

Affectation

 

A lifetime may not be enough

to recognize yourself;

I have a friend who, like the guy

who wears shades indoors,

doesn’t see what everyone does:

his affectation reveals exactly

what it was supposed to hide.

Writing, Ambitions

 

Reaching down into that sack

that’s always emptying;

scrabbling for ideas, having gobbled

the best of them years ago;

the left overs chewed

to the point flavourlessness.

Ambitions skinnier than wish-bones;

the best ideas: elusive sparks

that fly and quench.

Always running after notions

that were a May afternoon’s falling petals

forty years ago;

always straining for the psychedelic sky

colouring a different planet.

Warning, and not altogether joking

 

Parents with kids that go online,

sitting in the other room thinking everything’s fine;

you gotta keep watch, the dangers are immense;

the internet’s full of paedophiles and presidents.

Old Man Conversing With Blackbird

 Old Man Conversing With Blackbird

There’s an old man conversing with a blackbird

high in a sycamore across the street, whistling

up at it, grinning.

Odd-looking guy, long grey hair, pale face;

heavy coat pinned tight around his neck

almost down to his ankles; you can’t miss him.

Nuts, I’d say; oblivious to people passing,

looking at him; not dangerous though,

maybe to himself.

Only person on the street going nowhere,

like a rock in a stream; I think someone should come

and get him; put him somewhere safe.

Croghonagh

 How many paintings did Cezanne paint of Mont Sainte-Victoire? In different light, from different angles, at different times, in different seasons, different weathers. 

I look at the Gap and see the mountains change chameleon-like through the course of a day, much less a year. Irish weather is as changeable as it gets: bright sunshine alternates with rain frequently, not in a season, but in a day, an hour. With the shifting clouds, shifting colours; shifting cloudscapes. In driving rain, the mood changes: darker shades seem to bring darker moods. In mist, the mountains become vague and mysterious; suggestions of other things.

All in all, this place is a dream for landscape painters, but for poets too. 

Croaghonagh at Barnesmore in Donegal from a particular angle is a fearsome-looking cliff, from other angles less so. But with the never-ending procession of changing weather types, it seems almost alive. I wish I had the painter's skill to convey this, indeed, I wish I had greater skill in poetry to achieve it. But that, of course, hasn't stopped me yet.

Croaghonagh

This morning, cloud

streamed as jauntily from its neck

as any scarf that ever trailed

backward over a 1920’s Roadster.

At three, threatening

fiercely,

it glared across the valley

with a thunder-rolled brow.

After sunset, the light reflected

off the burnished

undersides of clouds,

dressed it in a burgundy evening gown.

Come dawn, it will be transparent;

birds lighter than seeds

will glide through its space

on elegant outstretched wings.

.

Five Winds.

The first throws fits;

vents his frustrations down telephone wires,

leaves nuts and bolts scattered all over the sky,

never cleans up.

The second lives in the hawthorn hedge,

stayed there all Christmas long,

brought soft drizzle to soothe a world in need;

dampened down the edges of noise;

left silver haws shimmering.

The third, a wind of the high sky,

keens an impossible pitch,

close your ears or you will mourn too.

Fourth, and most annoying, one that steals the sun's heat

when you've removed your shirt on the beach,

and still has the gall to leave you

inside the picture of a warm day.

And the wind imprisoned in an abandoned house:

kicking the doors, swinging in the rafters,

panicking in places no one can find;

a wind beside itself with the terror of its own company.

A Moment of Brilliance

 

She has a delicate face;

casts her eyes downward;

I noticed her mascara;

her eyes would be the brighter for it.

I saw the crescent of her eyelashes,

the curve of her cheek;

she was not speaking then

and did not know I was looking at her.

I was slightly behind

and to one side,

and formed an opinion

based on that view alone.

I fell in love

based on that view alone:

the delicacy of her fine-boned face,

her downcast eyes.

To me, they spelt gentleness or fragility.

In life, there are a few occasions that are urgent,

that are, like the lighting of a match,

brilliant flashes.

On a park-bench

 

On a park-bench, listening to the sound of leaves falling,

he became, suddenly, aware of the sound of heartbeat inside

his chest. The lub-dub of valves closing, then of the flow of

blood through those chambers, out into the arteries, and

around the labyrinthine vessels of his body.

The city silenced, the traffic that had flowed along the three

sides of the park now stationary, he was aware of himself

being present as he had never been to himself before.

Among falling Autumn leaves, a man sits in a state I’d almost

call ecstasy while the city growls continuously around him.

Razor Wire

 

She said,

I must wear my pain like razor wire,

but when you see me,

you fail to look beyond the wire.

When I say, I live deeper,

come join me, you’ll enjoy it;

you make it a fence;

you wear my pain like razor wire.

The Finest Poem

 

Spare:

the page.

‘How do I

fill such a space?’

a question to no one,

and no one answers.

Maybe the space is

the finest poem,

the infinite idea;

the poem

that dreamed itself

into being.

into being.

Zaknthos

 

Faraway the sea was a night-time city.

I stood unsteady, too much wine;

faraway the sea was shining in the moonlight.

Closer, by my hand in fact, a string of lights

on a clothes line,

a string of lights like a harbour-front on a Greek island.

Zaknthos, but that’s years ago;

the restaurants down by the harbour,

people passing in droves, waves of warm night humour,

boats jangling

and a quartet playing its way up and down the strip,

bouzouki music to clinking glasses.

My legs gone to rubber,

recent rain reflecting light from watching shrubs;

I would have sung, but it was far too cold.

Happy Christmas. 

An Ending That Isn't

 

Your life in all its magnificent capacity

to imagine and dream, plan, remember,

learn and know, create, innovate, love,

be so vital to so many, care and give,

support, achieve, fix, build, persevere;

now, today, reduced to the gruelling task

of maintaining a flow of air into the bellows

of your lungs.

Stop.

A bellows maintains a fire; it has no purpose otherwise,

and your breathing has no purpose now.

Rest.

Rest, let us continue;

we will carry you on.

Trees

 

Dark on this side, silver-white on the western

and seeming to bend under the weight of sunlight,

but, like beech leaves closing their palms,

the branches curve away from the wind.

The intricacy of trees exposed in December,

belying an apparent haphazardness,

here there’s a consistent angle in a tree’s branching,

there an upward sweep of branch-endings.

Beyond, topping the hills, now hay and rust coloured,

are windmills, Calvary-stark against the winter sky,

and they too harvesting energy, trees as we would design

them; spare and artless.