A Year of Flight

Seeds in June, nonchalantly,

like tourists

flying on the south-westerlies,

dawdling

where snowflakes in January

were hustled along

or the mists that spent days

‒ like looped film ‒

throwing shawls

over mountains’ shoulders.

Swallows plane lush lanes,

green larders;

later sycamore helicopters

flicker down

those same corridors

or thud, the crab apples

escaping with their summer’s booty;

globes of  pinhead lights:

fruit flies in pools of sun.

The spume cutting loose

from the waves

in Winter storms,

Guinness head rolling up the beach.

Aimless flight of gulls

in the high winds

chipped off the cliff-face;

above the houses, curdled cloud, 

charcoal crows,

disturbed people.

The Salmon in the Spring, the Hazel and the Hermit

When to give up? An edited version of a oem from some years back.

 The Salmon in the Spring, the Hazel and the Hermit

Into an open gob the hazelnuts fell,

so that over the years the salmon grew

into a colossus.

A day came when one nut fell plumb-line;

devoured complete with husk

at the very instant of its dimpling the surface,

it caused the salmon to spew from its intestines

the knowledge of a thousand years

that cascaded downhill

over the shilling bright stones,

through the ignorant meadows to the lake,

where it became part of an ever-shifting

circuit of water, weed, spume and silt.

A hermit, who lived by the lake,

dousing his face, drank some of this potion

and was instantly replete.

In time a hazel took root in his belly

and he convulsed

so that the stones unearthed by his flailing feet

filled the lake

and sent its waters flooding out

onto to the plain where the people lived;

so they, too, in their turn, drank;

and by this means knowledge and poetry spread

from the time that was before

to the times now and those yet to come.

That Final Trespass

 

That final trespass:

the undertaker preparing her corpse for viewing.

When I knock at the door he all but screams “don’t come in”.

She is now a commodity of the death industry.

Her taut face will hold the appearance of shutters pulled;

life folded neat as she exited.

Our Death Offering to the Future

 

Everywhere, humans altering the landscape,

not just governmental, but farmers, developers:

ourselves imposing designs on landscapes that

need follow their own evolutions or, as Darwin

might indicate, they become unfit for survival.

And so, the most transitory, those with least

claim to the future, gouging unmercifully through

nature’s processes, which include in their present

their future possibilities, persist in pulling the means

to live from under the feet of their grandchildren.

Beyond Einstein

 

They talk, panoplies of perception;

Picasso-like profusions.

Tourbillions, the stones’ eyes

as would reflect in Van Gogh’s skies

and mouths: plastic, scream-shaped

as Munch would devise.

Their thoughts run together;

disparate landscapes; maps;

fusions of time and space and dreams; 

beyond Einstein.

Woman at a window

 

A woman at a window;

her back to us,

still.

Window in a blank wall,

open

to the sea;

it flows into her:

the bay,

oceans, landmasses,

like air.

She rests,

arms on the window sill.

The Unifying Principle

 An updated version of a poem from 2018 that was inspired by Cagall's weightless lovers.

Love made us lighter than air;

we careered, wheeled and banked

above the town.

Time, gravity, all forces;

we were the unifying principle.

Curved like quarter moons,

fitting into each other precisely,

loving each other beyond norms,

we freed ourselves.

In that love nothing hurts;

in that love all is healing.

What Victory Looks Like In A War Cemetery

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Victory++++++++++++ +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

In that moment

 

In that moment their eyes told everything:

the young woman in love,

the older seeing a young suitor hamming it up.

One smiling, the other concealing laughter;

in that one moment, in their eyes,

see how the broken wheel turns.

Lough Graney

 

Lough Graney

1.

Walking the jetty over the lake;

lying there.

Eternity. A June afternoon

in that place of peace;

no one to disturb you

but yourself

rushing over the water

to be with you,

to complete

your happiness.

2.

This surface gifts the heavens to you;

I’ve always wondered how you could leave this place;

what finer existence could inveigle you?

Between lake and sky, soul stepping clear of body,

instantly ecstatic; did you imagine there was somewhere

the wings of your heart would find greater span?

Here, where the soft insistence of eternity enters your soul

and time bows to beauty.

Explorer

 This blog compels me to write, without it I don't think I'd have the motivation. Most would think twice about posting their undistilled efforts;  I find it helps to get ideas down, later I can come back to work them, and so, I'm re-posting some amended poems from a few years ago.

It does mean I get to look back on quite a few posts that should never have been let out, but I console myself  with the thought that even the greatest  photgraphers have taken god knows how many average photographs in their quest to capture their most prized images.]

Explorer

Collecting your warmth on the palm of my hand:

explorer of exotic landscapes,

brushing over the warm skin,

the shallow arc of your back.

Behind closed eyes:

the sunlit concave of a desert dune

amidst an undulating vastness:

the sun-warmed backs of dreams.

Travelling

 

cross the bridge

of your childhood

rolling it up

as you go

keep it

over your shoulder

ask for directions

to the desert

you’ll have arrived

when you are nowhere

unroll your pack

set up home

Mystery

Far down; a glimmer of light

from 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 mystery.

Pristine, icy; we drank

and believed it to be purity.

A Conundrum of Physics

 

What is the law that states:

a particular quantity of liquid

is available for spillage from a glass

without changing the quantity

that remains within the glass.

We’re in Slattery’s front lounge;

it’s packed, a lively Friday-night crowd;

a small lady, slightly tipsy, more than actually,

is having another glass of red wine,

and in the act of bringing it to her mouth

sends a curtain of it around the room

catching everyone at chest height

with, what I would consider, a generous

portion of her drink.

Genteel-mannered all around;

“not at all, not at all, it's only a drop of wine”

“Aw this blouse, I was never fond of it anyway”;

she drinks on

totally oblivious to the cacophony of jangling nerves.

Our Day at the Pump House

 

Won’t we remember our day at the pump house;

I played jangly old piano, you danced in sequins;

a few people came, a few more seemed to leave;

the trees were what trees should be in warm sunlight,

cast shadows dark enough for their leaves to be richest green

and the old buildings, with their stories peeling, stood there

like it was old news, and it was to them, but lives are short.

And won’t we remember you lay prone on the grass for hours;

it wasn’t the best of days and still, one day, it will be the best of days;

our day in the grounds of the old spa, the warm sun;

and I playing jangly old piano; you dancing in sequins.