Photograph Found

 

I find you among the strewn things in the attic

and pull you clear.

You all but demanded to be lifted

but then go mute.

I drop you back, watch a moment to see you settle;

you’re giving a porcelain vase your lop-sided smile.

It’s not the memories that holds me that bit longer;

but your smile in that heap of junk.

For My Country

It is hard to come to terms with the vicious inhumanity that comes with war. Men, women and children so recently going through the normal routines of life; how hard it is to comprehend the obliteration of that day to day normality we take for granted. All the more so that so many are now giving their lives to have it restored.

For My Country

I am dead

flesh torn, brain unplugged.

For my country,

my body,

all eighteen years of its growing,

I give to its soil.

Dignity

 

Mantegna's wonderful painting was in our family bible. When I was young I used to look at it and marvel; I still do. It wasn't the only painting of its time to take this perspective, but it is the most masterful. The colour reproduction is particularly important in this painting; to my mind the more stone- coloured, marble-coloured, Christ's body the more effective. The monumentalism of the image holds you, not just for spectacle sake, but ties you that bit longer to the experience of lamentation along with the two grieving women. 

To my mind the overwhelming impression is the dignity it conveys, in Christ's expression, His bearing, the setting of the scene, the calm that emanates from the body.

Dignity

on Mantegna’s ‘The Lamentation over the Dead Christ'’

the holes left by nails

the ripped flesh

later inspected by fingers

serene

those sins impounded

beneath closed eyelids

and monumental perspective

marble-like folds in the cloth

rippled upward in musculature

a transfiguration David to pietà

the falling tears

as rain might stir a seedling

A child of four years complains of his worries

 

A child of four years is complaining of his worries,

the television exploding nightly in his living room,

talk of nuclear bombs and he already fearful for the life

he barely knows.

Listening to the news, his father’s forehead wrinkles,

so he wrinkles his; feels that tautness inside but lacks

the words to ask what his worries are and how they got

to be inside him.

Night-time, he cries with the fear of the horrors lurking

in the dark corners of his bedroom, screams out of sleep

and carries those charred eyes into the following day to see

yet again torn bodies and buildings being heaped around him.

Enjoy a cup of coffee

 

A man is out cold on the footpath;

arms, legs splayed limp as shirt-sleeves;

fly open, penis bare;

unkempt, ill-fitting clothes,

dirty and worn.

Passers-by glimpse,

grimace momentarily;

distract themselves urgently

with a fireworks of alternative thoughts,

erase the scene.

It’s nice to stop off in Starbucks,

settle in cosy,

let the stresses of the day drain away.

There’s something nest-like about it,

among the office-workers, students, shoppers.

Holy Well

 

Hope hangs from the trees,

prayers dance;

the sick, the love-lorn

click their fingers;

an enamel mug keeps watch.

The sun and moon try to see

but cannot;

the stars try to land

but cannot.

Stone-made water

nestling in earth’s clasp;

dream of every thirst

always watching, silent as wisdom,

still in thought.

Reaching for my Rucksack

 No holidays since 2019. I’m spending more and more time wanting to see new sights. I want to be dazzled again. So many places! Considering my reluctance to fly, near Europe is looking particularly attractive, and, of those countries, Portugal is the one least travelled to date.

I’m not a beach dweller; I get bored. What I do love is visiting Neolithic, medieval, Roman, early Christian, Pre-Christian, you get it, sites. Churches, ruined castles, palaces, archaeological digs, bridges, towers, wells, bells etc. I have difficulty passing any of them; something to be seen that I haven’t, it irks me.

Back to Portugal. Though it doesn’t have anything like the number of World Heritage Sites to be found in neighbouring Spain, France or Germany; it does have 14 that are quite close to each other and constitute a very doable touring route around the northern two thirds of the country, with Braga the most northerly site and Evora the most southerly.

Starting at Lisbon, heading north via Sintra, Coimbra, Porto onto Braga and returning via the Douro wine-making region, dipping into Spain to include three destinations there, and heading on south via Elvas, Evora back to Lisbon.

17 World Heritage Sites easily included inside two weeks. On the way, I’ll have seen Neolithic, medieval, Roman, early Christian, Pre-Christian sites: churches, ruined castles, palaces, archaeological digs, bridges, towers, wells, bells etc.

Sorted then and happy to resume my couch overlooking Donegal Bay.

Droplets of Water

 

Droplets 

along the sharp edge of a stone

like a chain of headlights

in December traffic,

sidling onto moss greenery,

streaming down an algal thread

to a pool of pellucid water

over a mosaic of coloured stones.

Beads of water, taxis,

carrying you in iotas 

to pools, your thoughts

in subterranean caverns

where the beauties are pin-sized

and, though forgotten,

were once your fireworks.

Cells

 

I think myself eternal:

a lineage unbroken

since the first cell,

carried onward in

the infinity of cells.

I think myself central

to the effervescence

that is existence;

and you too;

I think we are one.

Red Trawler, Green Trawler

 

(The shocking truth of children 'sold' by nuns from Ireland to the US as portrayed in the film Philomena is the subject of this poem. Coincidentally St Philomena was the patron saint of infants, babies and youth.) 

Red trawler,

green trawler,

bobbing

on the  sea,

Danny

once Patsy

bouncing

on a knee.

With a red note

and a green note

quiet words

over a cup of tea

they sold 

my little darling

far away

from me.

Precious As Lives Should Be

 

Bivalve shells

encasing lives:

magnificent lockets

ribbed and banded,

corrugated

and toothed shut.

Sublime

in design and plan

as befits

the preservation of life;

precious

even to blind nature.

Logical Chicken

 

then featherless chickens

saving the industry the cost of plucking

legless chickens

saving the industry the cost of their removal

wingless chickens

saving the industry the cost of bone production

beakless chickens

saving the industry damage caused by pecking

and on and on

till eventually billions of units like enlarged fists 

producing chicken meat

to the gentle sound of fluids streaming through plastic tubing.

Sunlight through the Trees

 

Coins of sunlight

falling from the trees.

Seeing, like fish

see them,

gyrating vesicles of air;

hearing their tintinnabulation

inside the wells

of our eyes;

gathering their scintillations

in baskets

that are a weave of synapses;

singing their light

back to the trees.

She Moves

She moves like water;

her dress a pool of sky

filling my bucket eyes.

I swim in currents

of her hair;

she does not know.

Tomorrow will condense

around her,

myself part of it;

she has made my life

a river of tomorrows;

I wait for her there.

A Memory of my Father

 

 

Shaft of sunlight, 

reflection off a million specks 

of dust, 

feeding his face with lines and grace

 – soft light paints old faces  

the friendliness of sweet Autumn apples –. 

Hands held down to his grand-daughter,

she looking up into his face;

the delicacy of the moment

as Vermeer would have caught it

in the light that spills down

from a hole in the clouds.