Universe

 

Stars make space in my head.

Standing flying,

The universe without within;

Minute, infinite

I.

Harbour

Full sails once,

bulging with summer sunlight;

we would have gathered them in, eyes.

Geometries of whitened stone:

disused warehouses;

midday has lain down,

stretched out, listless beneath the walls.

Water that is lapping against the quay-side,

speak up;

what is the history of this place?

Entwined

 

Part river:

play of current on bronzed pebble-beds,

sweet.

Part stone:

tapping waters in the sound boxes beneath boulders,

their back-beat.

Part waterweed:

the choir’s descants ascend to high C,

the shape of it.

November Landscape

 

Sopping fields

green with water,

lush drumlins

sluicing November rain

down their soused sumps,

spewing stone-coloured cloudscapes

onto the road,

coughing up sozzled fences

from beer-brown drains

to hobble under their load of time

tunelessly

into winter’s torpor.

Escher style poem

 

Having arrived at my conclusion,

I embark upon a contemplation

of the issues.

Since there is nothing to consider,

I mull over them

and  reach the decision

that my ruminations are futile,

that I have already fixed

on a resolution

and that considerable forethought 

will be necessary 

for the solution I require.

Withering Peach

 

His face, a withering peach dried of happiness;

cares relentlessly tapping at his temples;

years spent yanking a livelihood from obstinate fields.

Still that skulking alertness, a hunger behind his eyes;

trigger-fast assessments, critical, begrudging;

observing the world with a lead-shot gaze.

The exertions of neighbours stored, bones for picking over

through interminable nights; nights that stack,

block upon block, building building hatred.

Hopelessly Adrift

 

Let’s say, I was to walk out in public bent into this shape:

it would be concluded that I was a half-wit;

from posture alone!

And let’s say my hair is unkempt and

I’m wearing a big black overcoat, hanging open;

people would cross the road.

If, on the other hand, I retrieve a kitten from the depths of the coat:

they’ll consider me harmless, away in the head,

still better avoided.

And, with all of that, if I appear to be perfectly happy in myself,

I’ll be discounted as a pitiful poor soul,

hopelessly adrift from reality.

Box

 

The house is a box.

I live in it,

like my skull,

among my things,

navigation markers

of my everyday.

Beyond the windows

chaos,

beautiful, daunting;

I gaze out,

make plans to negotiate it;

it stares back.

 

Happiness, a sudden burst

into song, driving along,

turning the radio up,

world streaming toward of you

and it’s all yours.

Moment

 

You, in stillness at the kitchen table,

in a melancholy slant of evening light,

gazing past the tableware 

at life.

In that moment, 

how monumental the tea things;

how infinitely small you;

how brittle life.

Allingham Festival Book Launch

I'm looking forward to sharing a launching event with Caoimhin MacAoidh at this year's Allingham Festival. I'll be launching  'The Sound of Water Searching' and Caoimhin  will be launching ‘Between the Jigs and the Reels’; a book, originally published in 1994, that has been out of print for a number of years. The event is part of the Allingham Festival in Ballyshannon and takes place on Nov. 6th in the Abbey Arts Centre at 2pm. Booker Prize nominee, Claire Keegan will be in conversation with Sinead Crowley following this event

Threshing Floor

 

Sometimes the sky runs through you:

a light-saturated blue, streamers of white cloud.

I’ve admired your free spirit, envied your lightness,

and tugged at my mooring ropes but found them firm.

No doubt, this vision of you reflects intangibility:

I may as well be grabbing at falling snow.

But still, I tell myself, that all I can be and all I can know

is extracted on the threshing floor of my mind.

Reflection on the Death of a Loved One.

My deepest sympathies to the families of those who died in the tragic explosion in Creeslough. I can barely imagine the feelings of devastation that must hang over all in such a small tightly-knit community. It has brought back my own exeriences of death, though none in such tragic circumstances.

Reflection on the Death of a Loved One. 

Your death has drilled into me 

deeper than I knew existed. 

There, in the centre of myself, 

this sudden disarrangement, 

as though some vital bolt loosened 

and parts of me disassembled. 

But if your time has passed, 

not so your life, 

I live on with you, braid of my soul 

which even death cannot undo.

Audio: Michael reads 2 poems from his new collection, 'The Sound of Water Searching'.

To The Slaughterhouse, Klimt Moment

Closed up

 

Here is time,

a jacket hanging on a nail.

And here is sunlight,

dumped on the disused counter.

Here is its shadow

slashed down a wall.

And here silence

in the amnesia of unstirred air.

Here is an eternity

even ghosts have abandoned.