Leaves in Sunlight

 

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.

Squalls

 

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.

Autumn Aria

 

The tree,

aria

on a pedestal,

coloratura.

Autumn

performance;

the wind carries

fire.

Wonders

 

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.

To The Slaughter House

 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.

Scale

 

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.’

Small Wonders

 

Photograph by Paul Caponigro

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.

Water

 

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.

Western Landscape

 

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

 

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.

Correction

 

Church, state, company, brother/sisterhood ask for loyalty,

not to what is right but to their advancement.

It is time now for a thousand whistles to blow:

ask not what you can do for your country – ask what you can do

that is right.

Fall

 

In keeping with the principle of relativity,

when the branch gave, she travelled past galaxies,

enchanted by their beauty, gently down,

admiring Autumn’s Doppler Effect on the stars,

the shift from green to reds, browns and yellows.

Near the speed of light, she might have mapped

the universe but for this reverie,

so when she touched down (with a frightening thud),

the research was left undone; subsequently

her attention was diverted into a different field.

Her Hair

 

Her hair

fell, long entwined tresses

down the length of her back,

down past her knees.

Sunlight nested there,

in those long ivy trails;

small birds must surely have flown

garlands about her head?

But today it was patterns

of run-off water on the strand;

the way the past is preserved;

still beautiful, if stone.

 

All of it,

all our care,

all our passion,

will become, soon enough,

just beautiful smoke.

No Name

 

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 the rucksack

set up home