It's not quite Christmas but the contentment would be a wish.
Being.
A sparkling Summer’s afternoon,
not doing, but being.
A solar panel,
bang centre of the back garden,
converting energy to contentment,
while activity is reduced
to fingertips running along the suede
of newly mown grass
and time is suspended,
dissipated into the blue yonder.
On a windy day, I, cloud,
trees and grass are one and
heaven, earth and water;
blue of sky trimmed with
cloud white and drizzle grey,
sway of branches, swell of
waves and dresses, flight
of hats and litter down street,
astray, voices from mouths,
birds careering into beyond
and leaves’ mouths lisping
off tune in the brightly breeze
lifting, hues patched and
colours drifting; eyes’ lights
and hearts billowing upward.
How wonderful the European stars must look
strung along the wire strands of border fences
or those butterflies, the endless coils of razor wire.
One might, upon seeing them, be reminded of staves
of music: Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms
or lines of text: Shakespeare, Dante, Cervantes,
or how civilisation was aghast seeing those photographs:
the skeletal faces of the innocent behind Auschwitz fences;
the horror that such could happen in our own time.
A Hand in Water
for my father
Trailing a hand from a boat:
that morning sluicing through my fingers
was my most perfect with you.
More than fifty years on,
the memory is in my fingers
as I watch a Hollywood hand trawl water.
Fishing for sunlight on a lake is a carefree pursuit,
not so fishing for your smile in memories;
but that flow through my fingers
is the feeling of complete happiness,
though the smile I’ve given you
may well be my own production.
When I brush my hair,
it sweeps over your head.
When I button up my coat,
you snuggle inside.
When I exert myself,
you mop your brow.
When I settle myself on the couch,
you tuck your legs up.
When I close my eyes,
you daydream.
When you go,
I will be no more.
Leaves: music
and colour;
in sunlight
they are.
On a warm
afternoon
icicles of air
play them;
turn white
those green flashes;
so eyes hear
the world.
I keep myself up to date,
not with what you do
but how you are;
I read the squalls
coming in over the ocean.
Like newspaper print,
they drizzle upward,
and, truth to tell, they hanker
after tragedy;
I find them totally compelling.
So, yes, down to the last comma
(they don’t do stops)
and I know that you know this,
I know how it is with you;
no tragedies, but squalls: how apt, yes.
The wind in the wires
is making choirs
of conversations
that would have passed
unheard.
The child standing
on the tarred road hums
what the wind strums
and beats a stick
on the ground.
The sound he hears
is the music of the spheres
from somewhere above
but a rustling in the hedge
turns his head
and there’s a mystery
in the darkness of leaves.
This is a re-edited version of a poem I posted some time back. When asked why I wrote/posted this poem, I was a bit stumped. I am not a vegetarian. I used to see this years ago in my childhood; it was ugly, but we took it as normal life. It's not a scene many are likely to see now. So the answer: I think it tugs at a deeply buried conviction that animals have greater awareness and understanding than we have ever given them credit for; and the only logical upshot to that is that our brutal treatment of them needs to end.
To The Slaughter House
White-filled socket, eye twisted; its contorted,
steaming body straining away from that room.
At the end of a rope taut to the straightness of cane,
haunches working, legs thrashing, sliding in shit;
and men flat out, dragging, pushing the heifer
towards the slaughter-house doorway.
Roaring, terrified as humans are; that same recognition,
same fight, same blood gut muscle response, same horror;
and men, angular to their brutal task: dragging, pushing, hauling.
At the end of the rope, its head straining upward; the tongue,
extended from its mouth, tasting the stench of death,
and the horror of its flagging resistance.
It is mid-afternoon in Dublin;
two boys are hammering the shit out of each other;
no one else is around; they don’t know just yet,
but this is the end of their friendship.
Pull out.
At a city crossroads a motorbike slows;
five shots ring out, two pedestrians collapse,
one is dead, one will be maimed;
the motorbike is now two streets away.
Pull out.
All is suddenly people running
through the streets escaping chaos;
most don’t know what happened;
outside a bookshop bodies scattered like litter.
Pull out.
Two nations are flexing toward war;
there’s ongoing military build-up along the border,
incendiary rhetoric,
and fear is churning the insides of both sets of citizens.
Pull Out.
Europe, all of it, in one eyeful;
the sharp curve of the globe;
blue iris earth;
earth a drop of water; beautiful.
Pull out.
‘There may be intelligent life out there,’
one creature said to another,
looking beyond the moons of its planet;
‘but I doubt it.’
What skies beneath our feet,
what immensities we trample;
how much gentler our step would be
if we saw the minute wonders of the world.
Far down, a glimmer of light;
down inside the earth, a wonder
to our young eyes.
We lowered the bucket
through the ferns and darkness
to collect magic,
and drew it up,
heavy with water
and mystery.
Pristine; icy; we drank
beautiful water,
and believed it to be purity.
The clouds are on the fields;
limestone walls their arms,
and thorns glistening black;
white berries of rain are
dropping from haws; haws
like rubies on slender fingers.
Limestone-locked, sodden
fields in thrall to water:
caged cress-green reveries;
long memories and dumb
to speak, as the sea might,
of sorrows buried in their depths.
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
sodden heaps, turning back to humus,
my October stars. In December they were gone,
but left hand-shaped traces all over the path,
waving back, waving back, those happy souls.
