Our Finest Belonging

 An edited version of a poem I wrote in 2021 inspired by a Sorolla painting of wife and daughters lying in the grass. 

As we lay there, our grass bodies within the sea

of meadow; sweep of wind carrying us along,

flowers of rye. We, the droning bumble bees

in buttercups, the chirruping finches, chomping

cattle; sudden dartings within briary hedgerows,

rustlings, commotions but hunters’ silences too

and only a vague consciousness of the faraway

                                              cataracts of traffic.

How sumptuous the flow of light and warmth,

the sinuousness of our bodies in that current;

the colours of the field embroidered into our bodies.

We, agglomerations of the soil, but the criss-crossing

zeniths of nerve and muscle too:

at one with the swathes of breeze-blown beauty,

settled, nested into our finest belonging.

We Lovers

 

Our colours are bells;

we, lovers, live forever;

defy perspective;

grow from each other

into each other;

no beginnings nor ends

but running timeless,

seamless like trains

                  through air.

Sun in a Cage

 

Pearl-white, the day;

January frozen colourless.

The sun, golden in its cage,

a pint of lager in a man’s hand,

a quarter mile out on a frozen lake.

Light coming through a keyhole

from another world, perhaps:

Summer, honey-coloured warmth;

small enough to carry in a hand,

persistent enough to shine into my eye.

In Autumn

 

Light falling

like leaves

in Autumn;

you inside it.

Eyes grey

in their pools;

pale and thin,

dimming;

disappearing

among the wonderful

colours 

of rotting.

Same Face

 

Failing light soft as Autumn leaves

falling.

The year’s foliage becoming humus,

new soil;

smell of decomposition: fresh, dank,

mossy;

preparation of next Summer’s fertility.

You standing,

foot on shovel, king of the ridges;

colour

of last apples, ripening towards rot;

who knew

that inside the lungs were discolouring,

hardening

as Winter will curtail with sheets of ice;

or that I

would stand, years on, in dank November;

with same face,

watching for the robin in the nearby hedge.

Boned Trees

 

When they shake out the fields,

wring the cities,

we fall out,

boned trees.

How our Summers passed

and fell,

desires.

Left us gaunt and brittle,

fingers

still scraping the sun.

What Legitimacy?

 

Blasted to rubble,

and buried in it,

a child,

a baby dead before

arriving on the floor

of his own mind.

Don’t talk of rights.

The Perfect Poem

 

The poem has a descant voice;

born of beautiful words,

it flows, whirls high above them.

Even when the meaning is opaque

it sings the song

the words are breathing into being.

 

Rain has stolen the plants

from my garden

leaving their colours

flowing unconfined

finding fresh courses

blending into new

carrying my eyes

oarless

over uncharted waterways

I Am

 

Silence as in a fish tank;

life laps to the walls

but in here almost tangible;

in this unstirred air.

In the stained glass gloaming

of this cathedral,

conscious of my own presence;

senses magnified.

Size, minute

inside this architecture,

colossal within my own frame

as standing beneath the stars;

I am

infinitesimal but integral.

at the table

 

Sitting at the table,

it set

but no one else there.

Your eyes, too,

elsewhere,

or lost perhaps.

How small you look;

and still

how far you may see.

Culture Night Poetry Reading in Ballyshannon

Readers of this blog tend to be from foreign parts, but should there happen to be anyone from the vicinity of south Donegal looking in, you may be interested to know that Local Hands in Ballyshannon is hosting  an evening of literary readings with interspesed music this friday evening, Culture Night, Fri 22nd. The event goes from 5pm to 8pm and features local poets and musicians; I expect to be reading in or around 6pm. Other readers include Olive Travers, Ted Hall, Roisín Lee, John and James McIntyre and members of Pen2Paper Writers Group from Donegal town. 

Local Hands, which conveniently has my books for sale, will have information on their facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/LocalHands/

   

Winter Trees

 

by Caspar David Friedrich 

Winter trees like old shipwrecks

sailed the winds;

hold those memories

close as the grain in their timbers.

Now defunct, the tips of their branches

scratch at the sky;

they stand, shaped to memory,

listless.

Superpowers

 

They had the genes,

they could embed them:

a dog’s hearing,

a cat’s dim-light vision,

dolphin’s echolocation;

they called them superpowers,

marketed them aggressively:

SUPERHUMANITY HAS ARRIVED.

They never admitted

that the brain cannot handle the sensitivity.

They never declared

test cases driven to madness,

sleep having become impossible,

nerves shattered, but advertised:

navigation skills of homing pigeons coming,

HUMAN FLIGHT ALMOST HERE.

But for Two Millimetres of Plastic.

 

A stone, a deadly bullet, flashed

from the wheel of a lorry

into the visor of my helmet,

driving it hard onto my nose.

Speeding to Tipperary on motorbike;

it would have smashed my face;

the bike, careering, would have dragged

my body; legs and arms breaking

in impossible angles,

jacket ribboning, a grotesque melange

of cloth and blood-sopped flesh.

By that thickness or the grace of the Gods,

I am the Michael I take for granted;

by such margins, we presume.