From Knockma

 

Green fields,

green the colour of water;

an ocean locked in place

beneath a grid of stone walls.

Lens, curvature of the planet,

green out of sight;

water

pinioned for grazing.

On Oxford Street

 

On Oxford Street a woman, falls straight as a Christmas tree

onto the pavement, suddenly dead in pink coat and hat, handbag

firmly clenched and eyes wide, staring at the sky.

Walking behind her, part of the morning throng, I had noticed

her purposeful walk, her style; a country-woman I concluded;

and then she was quite obviously dead.

The crowds flow past, she’s a boulder in their stream.

I consider in an instant what must be done, what is right,

and consider it long enough for it to be someone else’s consideration.

Barnesmore

 

Barnesmore

An Bearna Mór

A river runs through,

a road runs through,

the wires run through,

the wind runs through,

the rain runs through,

the snow runs through.

The moon stops,

its chin in its hand;

its mesmerising stare,

its silver gaze filling the pass;

nothing stirs

but ever so stealthily, the river

stealing the light away.

Travel.

 

To the farthest reaches of your skull:

a universe.

But, away, never;

you are always travelling within you.

From memory,

 

from within the wreath of that life,

from within the nest of your arms,

from within the blanket of your care,

from within the fire-glow of love,

I have grown from us then to us now,

I have taken you, in coexistence, onward,

we are as one as we have always been.

Voice

 Listening to Árbakkinn by Olafur Arnalds featuring the voice of Einar Georg I am struck by beauty of the voice, the ability of an older voice to stir the heart. And not lessened, maybe enhanced, by not understanding the words, this is one of what could be a number of responses. 

Voice

His voice was a thirsty stream

picking its way down among the rocks,

troubled slightly by the coins

that once cheered its passing.

It must have been a poem,

it wasn't my language; he spoke

as though watching his parents fade,

as though they were now reduced to a hand waving.

Salmon, All Gunbarrel

Salmon, all gunbarrel,

swim like weed,

watch like water,

dream like the moon.

Loneliness

 

She stands in her kitchen, turns, sits,

and feels there should be something,

there must be something.

But there is no other voice in that house

only the incessant radio gabble; she has tired

of it long ago; the repetition,

her brain on its spit; fatuous conversations,

contrived controversies, feigned remorse.

Or daytime television with its seeping mildew of cheap

dramas, old westerns and World War II;

a hundred channels, she can flick through a hundred

channels before throwing the useless remote away from her.

How can life have reduced to this nothingness;

she addresses the question to brain inside her head,

and it as voiceless as the house.

A Tale For The Times That Are In It

 

Drab, his room, like a prison cell, north-facing,

swill coloured; depressed outhouses crowded

into his window, a man-made fungal growth;

tea-coloured light oozed from the bare bulb

into his soul, till it too was of the same paint.

One day, he broke some daffodils in the park,

picked them up and brought them home;

left them lying, a rag of sunshine on the table.

Sunlight at last; he went back for more:

crocuses, tulips, ivy, grasses, bluebells, lilies.

Now a flower- bed larcenist, his room an explosion

in a paint factory bedecked from ceiling to floor

with all the flowers of the season, and his soul

blooming in colours that were, once, no more to him

than litter strewn across unkempt suburban lawns.

But as seasons passed and flowers died, unsatisfied

he learned to grow beauty; bulbs, slips, seeds.

That magic took him from his room to the library

where the tendrils of his research spread to faraway

places, and he travelled with them.

Books littered his table; a scatter of ripe, fallen fruits.

Sunlight poured upward from their pages, exploded

in firework blossoms all the way up to the ceiling,

all day, as though he had turned the house around;

and, in a way, I think you could say, he had.

Her Mind

 

Her mind

brimming with plans and schemes,

calculations and wishes,

possibilities of all sorts,

worries and cares,

memories you might keep in a music box,

pictures; movies, old and new, and never made

are box-offce in that Roxy;

the smoke-like tendril from childhood that loops about her,

those beautiful thoughts and philosophies

dreams, old loves and glories,

secret places like streams that play music on coloured stones,

or wells lost beneath ferns;

her creations, the wonderful, the zany;

her knowledge and learning,

her files, research projects, best or broken practises;

scaffolding half built on half built ideas;

the far reaches beyond plains, mountains, rivers and seas;

and cupboards she keeps locked on the shady side of the moon;

I hold it in my hands

while she has her eyes shut

and sleep is setting in.

Exhilaration

 

i

Shoals of fish leap

gleaming over the water:

sunlight stampedes.

ii

A running child

imagines

his legs are wheels.

iii

Eyes upward

into the abseiling spiders

that clutter the air,

muffle the earth

in an exhilaration of snow.

Beak, Flight

 

Air-slicked,

slivered,

low to

the ground,

arrow straight,

pointed,

concealed in speed,

flecked

and silvered,

particle, weight

and eye.

A Man

 

Happiness didn’t intrude on him too much

so instead he took to filling himself with booze,

which zinged his mind, sent him dancing

(after a fashion) home most nights.

He became known for dancing,

which was not to his advantage; it was a style

of dancing that people considered unseemly,

so they left him to himself, to dance himself home.

Made him very angry with everyone, he took to arguing

with himself, but in his isolation, he lost his volume

control, found himself kicked out of the bars onto the streets;

the streets where the traffic passes in an unending blur.

There seemed no reason not to argue with a blur; he did

continually, eventually becoming physical,

but the traffic didn’t stop

From Winter Trees

 

Cherry-blossomed with sunlight:

our black branches

above January’s whitened hills.

Let’s gather the berries

of these Fabergé-brilliant wonders

into the bright cans of our eyes;

let’s harvest their sparkle;

drench the old stones

that have long since forgotten to smile.

Walking Red Water

 

While walking the red water

into the bloody sky, above pitch

black trees, pilgrims to the shore,

a hundred thousand starlings fly

my chest to the blade-blue corners

of the world. I flap my coat, they rain

black cinders onto the lake, rekindle,

resurrect and flash; the clouds’ fire

feathers spread further eastward, and

there’s calm like I’ve swallowed the

wind; suddenly colossal, I hunt the sun

beyond the curve of the known earth.