Welcoming Felix

So, I'm a grandad. Felix arrived in February, when I started this poem; only now completing it or at least editing it further. It's all colour for the little fellow now, but seeing him in February, it really struck me how extraordinary the process of human growth and development is.

Welcoming Felix  

Well, Felix, you finally made it. How small you are, sleeping,

half-waking to a world of black and white, soon enough to be colour.

Exploring it in  your mother’s face; later the room, the house, the garden; 

all the time gathering to yourself the world within grasp.

That growth, from the cockle you are now to the man coming;

let it be flush with the eagerness to experience life’s richness,

may it ease you into the heart of happiness.

So, Felix,

with your sight still forming; may the world come, settle gently around you.

I wish you the love that will make it easy, safe passage through the days

and the humour to break the backs of any hardships you may meet.

   xxx

For Mother's Day

 Waving

 It was not the wave from the door, but,

when she’d turned out of the gate, looking back,

mother was still there with a second wave,

that, like an exchange of vows, was love

declared, over and over, with the simplest gesture.

Great milestones of her life started there;

her ever-growing steps towards independence,

all blessed with that wave, a warm pullover of love

to wear wherever the steps were going; and knowing too

that those waves were always tinged with sadness.

An insight into our capability for inhumanity

 

 Inured to the inhumanity displayed in times of war, here is a horrific example of the depths we are capable of descending to. Historic it may be, but there is no real indication that anything has improved; the genes haven't changed, only the arenas in which our basest inclinations play out.

 

Jam

 

Plump juicy blackberries:

that’s where the Summer went.

Rosy-cheeked apples, damsons:

-- energy neither created nor destroyed --

Summer’s sun packaged for Winter’s want.

September, we stretched across the hedges,

beat the birds to the berries,

and filled our cans. All went into the pot;

the kitchen filled with clouds of steam;

the windows, opaque,

cut us off from the world.

Fresh bread thickly sliced and buttered,

slathered in blackberry jam

still warm and flowing; we ate greedily

while the jars, in ranks,

stood prepared to face the darker months.

Audio: Michael reads 2 poems from his new collection, 'The Sound of Water Searching'.

To The Slaughterhouse, Klimt Moment

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.