Under the Stairs

 

That blackness, beyond the storage boxes,

tins of polish, hoover and copper kettle

was, in the beginning, a solid-looking barrier;

I had no intention of going near it.

Time passed, I ventured further. On my knees

into the space, discovering shadowy discards,

dismantled appliances, things unknown to me, perhaps

from an earlier time and still that pitch unknown ahead of me.

A cave, a bottomless shaft to Australia, to Hell?

Eventually I breached the darkness and found it stopped

right there, wood; a prosaic end to my fantasies,

a step out of childhood.

My New Collection, 'The Sound of Water Searching'

It's been a long time coming and, needless to say, I think it's the literary event of the year. The Sound of Water Searching is now available from Lapwing Publications. Available in soft cover only, it costs £10/€12 plus postage. For purchasing information email  https://sites.google.com/a/lapwingpublications.com/lapwing-store/to-buy-a-lapwing-title For information on Lapwing Publications email lapwing.poetry@ntlworld.com   You can contact me at mmodros@gmail.com 

The Sound of Water Searching

From personal poems that draw on "the emptied out treasure-chests of childhood" to reflections on the work of Elaine Leigh, John Minihan, Mick O'Dea and others, Michael O'Dea is interested in the ways that memory, experience, and meditation inform the life of the poet. The poems gathered in The Sound of Water Searching give voice to his ceaseless commitment to the artistic process: a "beautiful odyssey" that takes us from Dublin to Galicia and beyond.                      

Philip Coleman (Trinity College Dublin)

Wind and Tree

 

‘You’re still here’ said the wind to the tree;

‘And where else would I be, this is home!’

But the wind was already gone.

Some days later, ‘But don’t you get bored?’

‘Even the stirring of soil beneath my roots interests me

                                      when I am home,’ said the tree.

But the wind was already gone.

When passing again, the wind asked, ‘Don’t you long to travel?’

‘This place and I are inseparable lovers.’

But the wind was already gone.

The next time the tree asked, ‘Won’t you stop a moment?’

‘Oh, to have such freedom!’ replied the wind

and it already gone.

Pandemic Times

Things have improved, there was a time, not long ago, when windows looked like they were going to be omnipresent in our future relations; it was upsetting and somehow ridiculous. Here's Kay and I not too long ago meeting our daughter; sad to say, it's likely to happen again.

Autumn Aria

 

The tree,

aria

on a pedestal,

coloratura.

Autumn

performance;

the wind carries

fire.

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.

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.

Goya

Goya from The Disasters of War

Goya

Of course not!

Of course no one that ever cracked open a head

has seen a symphony pour out.

No executioner has seen the flow of an amber fireside

with its intimate and tangling caresses 

drain from the split skulls of lovers 

 nor have soldiers who shoot dark holes 

 seen rafts of memories spilling, 

 carrying the children, the birthdays, the orchards, 

 the dances. 

 When they shot the poet, Lorca,

 the bullets sailed in a universe, 

 yet when the blood spurted it was only blood 

 to them.

Bluebells

 

Bluebells

in memory of Peter 1929 ‒ 2021

We had watched the bluebells arriving

in ones and twos, clusters then crowds;

their lights switching on like houses

on the hillside settling in for the night.

We’d watched the blue covers extending

down the fields, and the Castle Caldwell trees

bathing ankle-deep in those waves.

We filled our eyes with the beauty,

harvesting it for thinner days;

the day the brilliant blue light dimmed on the hillside

was the day it went from your eyes.

We stopped the car to see it quenched

like a plantation felled or the bay’s muddy floor at neap tide,

and thanked God the granaries of our memories were overflowing.

My Advice This November Day

Don’t be too fond of owning,  my little love.

As you fly;
let your head be full of the magic of flying
and happiness will be yours.
Be light as a leaf  among the millions;
such exhilaration!

This flight is your life, darling;
unique, incredible, finite.

Meeting at Nursing Home During the Pandemic

I must make an appointment

though we set the pendulum of our lives;

I must meet you through glass

though our breathing was one;

I must talk across a distance

though our words and breath were one;

I must put my hand to the glass

though happiness was the heat of your skin;

I must go away

though you are my home.

Silver Birches

Today I came on a stand of birches

dazzling in late evening sunlight.

A tableau of, maybe, a dozen nudes;

splendid, shameless.

Torsos of Elginesque splendour,

arms twining upward in Grecian gracefulness;

statuesque beauties

nonchalant in Olympian lasciviousness.

Feichín's Response to the Women of Omey

On hungry mornings, Feichín became a cormorant,

dived deep into the Atlantic to retrieve miraculous numbers of fish.

On the rocks of Omey, he often caused commotions, standing,

arms extended, skin stretched tight over bones, naked as a newborn chick,

drying his body in the wind.

When, once, the women of Omey delegated one of their number to go to him

to chastise him for his sinful displays, which, their souls being jeopardised,

must be the devil’s work; he, upon hearing their complaint, reached up to a shelf,

took down the bones of a meal and asked,

“Do these bones offend you?”

“No”, she replied.

“Was I not more clothed than these?”

and with that he took a switch to her and sent her running from his hut.

Days of our Lives

So we’d have a coffee, maybe two, then off

into town by the side streets, looking for

red-brick houses with lilac doors and yellow

window frames. Drop into the IFI, sit over

another coffee, browsing the catalogue with half interest,

the steady drift of film-goers and idlers with more.

On down Dame Street to College Green,

enjoying our navigation of ever-shifting crowds,

the dexterous manoeuvrability of ourselves.

In Hodges Figgis we’d scan the poetry

shelves and the art books, those names and titles

settling in our heads like we were travelling the

world: Heaney, Mahon, Carver, Balthus,

Kahlo, Lorca, Basho, Holub ‒ dabs of fresh paint

and print to keep us informed for a month or two ‒

before returning to Grafton Street to knit crooked stitches

through the crowds, stop a few minutes to hear a busker

play a saw or slide guitar then around to Tower Records

to be tempted by some new ECM arrival in the jazz section.

George’s, Aungier, Wexford, Camden, Richmond Streets;

the diminishing scale of a city’s architecture, and

the backwards walk down the telescope to the landscape

of our normal lives. Crossing the border at the canal, with

its familiar vista down Rathmines Road to the mountains

beyond; we, like fish, breathing easier in our own habitat,

saw our hurdles flattened, but, perhaps, never recognized

the days of our lives?

That beautiful odyssey: Saturdays, mid-morning to mid-afternoon;

or maybe it was just one Saturday,

or, maybe, it wasn’t at all.

Klimt Moment

We’ll sit where we sat before, above the stream,

watching the golden eels of sunlight dart and shimmy

above bronze coloured stones to the sound of water searching

out all the possible solutions to the conundrum of strewn rocks

while somewhere beneath us a hollow-sounding tock tock

drums our time away.

Let us weave time and stream into a cloak, a Klimt creation:

magnificent flowing, yet enveloping us in a precise moment

of pleasure. Let us hold it in our eyes so we may see it, wear it

when times are harder, these moments scarcer and the glint

of gold more precious.