Bridge Life

It was, of course, bridge life:

the monk-like garb of old men,

their herring-boned elbows on the parapet,

at home with those ancient lichens

and warmed by their burning pipe fires.

They were limbs of trees left out for the cutting;

softened by rain, hardened by wind,

they were brittle grey grained men

whose conversations flowed in runnels

pocked with their growls and their laughter.

And it was the river flowing, weaving

their childhood and old years into a tweed:

a comfortable cloth, their cloth, the cloth

to warm their bones when the wind comes

that makes old teeth chatter.

A whiter shade of pale

The ‘Whiter Shade of Pale’ was playing downstairs;

it was a strange grab from the house of her childhood.

She went into to her parents’ bedroom and stopped

at the end of their bed to gaze at the two pillows;

side by side, the indentation of her father’s head still on one,

 the other fluffed up; typical mother, early to rise.

The shock of that: the pillows carrying their personalities,

and full of the emptiness of their passing; 

she had to leave.

In Driving Rain, Winter Evening, Roscommon Street, 1967

                                                  

Fifth door.

Beatified in neon glow, barber’s neat hands spume

around farmer’s haycock. 
With kiss-smacking scissors

hitting rhythm, he tum-te-tums rivulets down his window.

Third door.

While cleaver dives solitary in ribbed abyssal caverns,

butcher sings whale-song 
through hulking skeletons

to distant splash of housewife on a sandy shore.   

First door.

Set of skin-bones fingers lurch, grab rope, Guinness.

Beneath 60 watt light 
hums Jim Reeves vaguely Hawaii-ish;

sound of distant thumb-tacks hitting ocean one thousand miles away.

Scalene.

'Scalene, scalene, scalene', he repeats

over and over.

The word a stroke

he keeps swimming;

each scalene keeps his head over;

'scalene, scalene' 

and I too leave the room.

Declaration

‘Life is shorter down the red end of a match',

he said apropos of nothing and continued to look

out the window, his pupils tiny drill-bits halted, still.

I was about to say

but didn’t.

He was flicking his thumb along his index finger like

a match along the sandpaper strip of a box of matches

and something was...

I think he was smoothing a thought for verbalisation,

when it must have dropped through the floorboards so

there the whirring stalled.

I said ‘how do you mean?’

He turned toward me with his teeth in a clear white strip

which closed to lips as his focussing eyes softened;

‘I’ve got cancer' he said.

Murmuration

In this moment you and I:

love, loves and feelings;

our place and time

together, apart;

my crooked walk,

your long hair,

my guitar, your concertina,

our families past and present;

houses, rooms, gardens,

the streets, towns and city

childhood to adulthood;

teachers, neighbours, friends;

all murmuration; fluid

we have passed so easily through,

above and within;

watched weightless, weighted

and weightless again;

eased our voices into the waves

that are eternal,

and, I believe, sang

more than our share.

Solar Festival of Newgrange

At the Festival of the Golden Light of Síd in Broga*

I sucked pale sunlight

and exhaled it golden.

You drank it at the eyes

and exalted me, Síd in Broga.

Drank yourselves drunk,

pissed in the river beneath you.

The Boyne stole my silver

and merrily, merrily carried it off to sea.

* In his book, Newgrange: the mystery of the chequered lights,  Hugh Kearns offers his theory that Newgrange (Síd in Broga) housed a gold mirror.

In The Ring

One word thrown into the ring,

and intimacy is honed to cruelty.

Our red mouths’ lining never spared;

if I ever loved you, it was my mistake.

                    And still, there was no mistake;

                    I love you.

Three Monsters.

         

Here are three monsters:

Agony, a greyhound skinned; howl.

Hollowness, a hen plucked; peck.

Dementia, a bundle of hay; scratch.

I have stood them on furniture

to pose.

They were in the entrails of spirit,

I picked them out with a forceps.

I thought they looked remarkable in the light.

I thought the viewing public

might want to scrape at them

with their spatulas.

Questions.

Questions from my young children, And like a year, there's sweet and bitter; but I'm wishing you a very happy new year the very best for 2019.

Questions.

Dad, can you make our car fly?

Is there a wizard's castle outside Roscommon?

Do dreams have wheels?

Can I taste your Guinness?

Does Superwoman eat cabbage?

Is Ritzy a boy or a girl?

Has Santa come yet?

Did the man put the fart in a bag?

Dad, will I die of cancer?

Christmas Flowers

All those words:

hey, welcome, happy Christmas,

we’ve missed you,  wonderful to have you home,

happy new year, I love you.

And the following, inevitable

take care of yourself, safe journey, be safe,

goodbye, we’ll miss you, ring.

Christmas flowers:

the bright blooms with their thorns,

colouring the season, bloom in your heart,

bloom beyond the decorations, into Spring,

and still when shafts of April light are gathering heat;

when  the bright space of Summer is widening around you.

Childhood Garden.

Here again;

my eyes tulips,

fists apples, 

feet groundsel.

Garden my mind,

spade spark stone,

bindweed's brilliant flowers,

clouds notions,

and all you said now clay,

my dears, my memories.

Turf high,

rhubarb hibernating in straw;

ridges ridges

my dear soul;

light on the lawn

and from between black clouds,

oh God speaks;

burst football under the privet,

rusted tins,

empty shells

and

snowdrops;

magnificent snowdrops.

With a very happy Christmas to all.

On Seeing Cnoc Mordán from the Clare Coast

I have a notion of beauty that is a wild place;

a grey desolate lake beneath a craggy ridge,

a windswept landscape of stunted thorns,

strewn boulders and scattered outcrops,

furze blooming out of season, dun-coloured reeds,

bronzed bracken broken double by the Atlantic gales.

But it is not the place, not really, it is the girl that lived beside that lake,

in the streaming Connemara gales that swept  her hair,

gave the colour to her face; sallowed her skin

so her eyes shone sharp as needles; gave her the same grace

as the reeds by the water,  slender and graceful. That’s how I saw her;

and now I see the ridge across Galway Bay forty, closer to fifty years later.

Unmerciful time; the place is unchanged but I am old,

and she is old, and the dreams that were young and beautiful

are now like the bracken broken double by the Autumn gales.

But it is not the girl, not really, it is the notions in our heads still hanging 

though November has come, and the sunlight on Loch Con Aortha,

long past summer, full of the cold clarity that comes with Winter.   

Passion

                              Pared down

to tongues and mouths,

we became one.

One moment.

The following moment

steals the previous;

and so it goes.

Kavanagh and I by the Grand Canal

Sodden in driving rain,

watching our  lives

bobbing on the water

while the colour-drained city

shivers backwards;

the two of us lamenting the sins

we never committed at all.

But you outdo me

having made this place your own;

ducking with the waterfowl

into the city’s murk,

claiming no part of it,

and always happiest

when the rain’s flaying.