Statement

My demons know no boundaries;

I am a propeller

blinded by my own agitation.

When I come to

I’ll be devastated,

and stamp out fires that never burned.

Blue-veined old hands :

I never saw them coming

till they were spread bleak

as the limbs of Winter trees

across vacant heavens.

When I said I loved you

I whacked at the wall

with a stick of oar weed

picked off the strand.

Cantankerous old fool :

never saw him coming

till words I spat out

fell like lightning turned

to twigs of rotten wood.

The baby in the tree

It's surprising where ideas come from. There  was a white carrier bag snagged high in a tree on Leinster Road.

         The baby in the tree

The baby in the tree

is screaming.

High above the pathway

near the black tips

of the sycamore branches

he is gaping,

white membraned luminous.

How did he get there?

He blew there in the wind;

it took him

like a flag from his cot

till he was stretched

across the boughs

like the wings of a bat.

And who sees him?

I do;

all his hopeless writhing,

too high for the passerby.

And his screams:

too high,

too high for the passerby.

When you pass

written with Karen McManus in mind.

When you pass,

cups miss mouths,

ladders slip,

buckets crash down,

cars veer,

cyclists swerve,

drunkards sober up,

poles and policemen collide,

business men miss kerbs,

schoolboys drool.

Me? I’m just your wing mirror,

enjoying the devastation

behind you.

Dum te dum te dum

In glorious Technicolor, breathtaking Cinemascope, magnificent

dum te dum te dum te dum stereophonic surround sound, Michael

lying on corrugated roof watching for Germans or Indians

crawling on their bellies through the tall grass of Glynn’s garden.

Eyes, pillbox slits. Sharp blades of grass quivering in June breeze;

or infiltrating dogs, enemies. Sounds, rustlings in the heat haze,

above the undergrowth, flicker in his eyes; sweeps the sweat

from his forehead beneath a blazing noon sun; endlessly patience,

tripwire-finger on trigger. It was the time of get that woman back

into the wagon, but Michael skipped last night’s soppy love scene

and is now the last one, the only one, still alive to defend O’Dea’s.

Goddess of Winter, Cailleach

I am weave,

flows bare bones of the land,

roots blood my stealth;

streams mountain hair,

hillsides’ ruminations,

meadow fantasies;

bleaches sunlight,

sugars earth,

rips the seas’ tides;

calls clockwork from branches,

buries bones in soil, drags days behind,

stirs the year.

Poem beside your hospital bed

Your face that I loved
has changed so completely
that I already know
Our time has gone.

And, as dying like a sandstorm
rearranges your features,
I am useless,
a cripple of words.

But if the winds
 in your head will carry
the smallest part
of what I'm trying to say, father

let it be
that my proud years
are tatters here;
I love you.

Wheel

In this wheel

I am spokes, smile and scowl.

Tonight, careering around the town,

I see all the pub doors closing

and take it personally;

don’t want to go in, don’t want to stay out.

Next week I'll tumble down these steps again;

people always make room

but then, just as I've nearly passed,

they kick me.

My smile and scowl are identical;

they think I'm a contraption.

Visiting the Corsetmaker

 It was ireland in the sixties. Corset conversation veered very close to immodesty. Michael O'Hehir was the voice of Sunday afternoons in Summer, and a spin in the car seemed like a good idea, but children get bored quickly.

 VISITING THE CORSETMAKER

Miss Gately, you know, the corsetmaker; her cottage 

thatched and whitewashed beneath sycamores ragged with 

crows and their bickering. A Sunday afternoon, my mother 

walking to the red door and it opened and closed and 

nothing else stirring for ages but ourselves in the back of the 

white consul with the red roof at the end of the avenue, just 

outside the gate; stone walls and lichen patches wallpapering 

our afternoon. Father dropping off in the driver’s seat 

while Micheal O'Hehir commentated on matches, one after 

another, without ever taking a breath in all that pipe smoke; matches collecting in the ash-tray all burnt to tiny black bird 

bones and the condensation all used up with words and 

faces dribbling pathetically into shapeless bad temper. Over 

and over: will she ever come out, can’t we go now, why do 

we always have to come, move your legs; till eventually she 

would reappear, a slap in the doorway, motor jauntily, 

red-headed, back to the car like it’s been five minutes or 

something, and Dad’s awake, reversing from the gate, back 

into the remains of a Sunday afternoon.

And I never knew what went on in there; never saw who 

opened the door, never saw a package, never heard anything 

about it. My father didn’t know either. I remember she 

took my sister with her when my sister was in secondary 

school. I wouldn’t have wanted to join them anyway, it was obviously a woman’s house.

‘Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion

‘What are we?’ I ruminate;

flat stone skipping over water.

‘What are we?’ opposite wall

in blind alley.

‘What are we?’ armchair

drowsy in fireglow.

‘What are we?’ a tooth

in kindred company.

‘What are we?’ pin fixed

 in a pin-cushion.

Bird Bones and poetry

AvantAppal(achia) 5 is now online; it gives me the perfect reason to repost this photo; see why at https://www.avantappalachia.com/ 

Number 6 is due in December. The submission details can be found at the above address.

Old Man

Oh, that’s not who he is,

age is just the cap on his head.

And cranky: it’s what he’s been holding

since youth, his rebellion.

We should listen, but, only the old can know

what the old know.

Napalm.

            

           (a poem about distance)

            Nice to feel the sun on your back,

            cool yourself down in the sea;

            watch the girls on the beach:

            beautiful bodies.

            Nice too, the sounds of the seaside:

            a speed-boat buzzing, 

            the tide washing onto the sand,

            children screaming.

On Murvagh Beach

There’s so little difference between sea and cloud

that the whole scene might as well be upside down,

with the bisectors of St John’s Point, a finger stretching

across the horizon, and Mullagmore, a finger, Adam’s to God,

reaching back. To the left, white clouds are hanging,

sheets from a bed, down the sides of Ben Bulben; to the right

the Bluestacks are slumped  beneath mosquito nets of rain.

Smokey light is filling the bay like ether, lulling the world,

so waves that have raced across the ocean, surviving the fury

at Rosnowlagh, now collapse, spent, onto the sand.

Murvagh beach, pooled with clouds we’re walking through;

two silhouettes moving along the bottom edge of a canvas now cause

 a tin of paint to splatter upward: a bevy of oystercatchers taking to flight.

Where grey is the most beautiful colour: Inis Meáin