Satchel

On the first day back, your new Satchel
Was the talk of the class, slate gray,
Strewn over one shoulder, double weight,
With all the lock and spin of a swivel on-edge
When you could no longer take the pull.
And Stephen Wallace in your ear, pushing
Questions of shop stores, floor courts
And the trip to Dublin with your parents
Where the attaché was found at the back
Of McEvoys leather shop, 'Straight
Off the ship from the States, fine stuff.'

And to think of you now fifty years on
Could send a shiver through me; a dark river
Without tributary or offshoot, the steel
Of your bootcaps kissing side streets,
Silver saxophone at your side and the gray
Sack strapless, emptier now than it was
When time gave more than it took away.

Mick Walsh, Returned

Nothing like admonition,
The doubled frost thawing
Out in the green belt

Where trench from trench
Field mice cram
And scuttle across roads,

Not knowing headlight
From streeetlight until
The screech of a brake

Or, more often than that,
The rev of an engine
Hastens, breathes, jumps.

Like you, Mick, when
They called you home.
A desert rat sand-lost

Between two trenches.
One barren, out sensed
world outside the World -

Another away from it all,
The flinched obscurity
Of a two up, two down

Red brick council house
Until now forgotten
Mid-haze of acetylene

And machinefire,
Gold-shells folding
And spitting the dirt -

Miles from the conches
You'd hold to your ear
On Kielty strand come summer,

The wish-washed audibles
Of the ocean you loved
And gave yourself to

On that lifeboat night. Salt
Slipping your cheek, the numb
Of her lips on return

As you came in from
The botched rescue, two
Men never seen again.

Mick, you hardly slept
For two months after that.

And here, your first steps
Back on land, our western air
Pushing at your back,

Pushing and reminding
You of the first days
Perched up on scaffold

And roof, the talk
Of the town on County
Final week, wind-swept

In the slip and slash
Of a roof slate giving
Way, all but forgiven

Because it was you, "so
long as you held on
come Sunday!" And you did.

Now I see you, shot out
Of your mothers arms
As they keep you up to date

Of what's passing, passed
And yet to come.
Not knowing acceleration

From brake shift, caught
Out in the round belts
Of thought and consequence-

Thinking to yourself:
"Where to now? Where to now
it's all been seen and done?"

Marat Bathing

"My blood boils in my veins against
the so-called fathers of the country"
-Jean Paul Marat


Blood once boiled in vein
Will later freeze in water.

"A moi! A moi! dearest friend,
He who curdled the linseed,
Hacked away at swan feather
And dipped it in the dark ink:
Leave now! For what is France
But a hard nailed crucifx
Without a Jesus to hang there."

Red as a parisienne sunset,
His button shoe, shallow grave
Took two steps to the side.

Land's End

The coastline glassed and glistened.

This, we are told, is Lands End:
Clenched fists of rock bracing impact,
Conch-strands taking in veils of light.
Unyielding, static-still, balanced.

In the distance: detonative immersion.

Flushed rush. Ocean waves sequenced
As if Atlantic light shows defusing--
Up in the air with strato-cirrus again,
White on white, clambering for position.

Down below pellicles of salt and silt

Shimmer the shoreline. With you there,
Frozen out and numbed, long drawn,
My calico shirt skin-tight against you,
The look in your eyes crying salvation.

Shadowland

Twitches of thimbles were soldiers shot
Dead from range. Death by shadow gun -

The innocence of life was never clearer
Than in that dim box-room we dusked
With candlelight through hand dogs
And finger wolves against the whitewall.

Sillhouetting eternity, one dimensional,
But then, childhood was a bit like that:

In absentia and silenced. The imagination
Projected as if a dark recreation of itself. 

Elderberry

Honeysuckle. Pith sponge innocence.
Corked bumps on a newborn bark.

Umbrella flowered, flat-topped charm,
Panicked panicles launch into bloom.
Like tempura, fluffed and segmented,
We treat the elderblow under low heat,
Not to deconstruct but to strengthen.

Mid summer hazes hue a dappled dew
Shades of deep purple and flicker desire.

Now trip the wooded path, rehang Judas,
Debranch a cluster and ring-a-rosie
Faery circles, where Elves fear Witches
And non-believers, as if in a dream,
Chanting "elder be ye Lady's tree..."

Observations

I have seen the thrust of sirrocco winds
dethrone the wildest flower, the pretty follies
of oxlips swept away to certain death,.

I have seen sawflies prepare for blitzkrieg,
snails roll in like russian tanks - armies
on Dihon weep for wizened petals.

I have seen rose-queens bow, clutches
of lilac trumpets silenced in the ruins
of wilted kingdoms, daggers slicing
through in swells of violent passion.

I have seen Death make life beautiful.

Lament

"All but Death, can be Adjusted --"
Emily Dickinson

1.

Deciduous. Unrecognisable. Faded.
A crumpled katsura leaf before the fall
to a forest of flourishing fuschia.

From it coming an ambush of silence,
as if the waking from a dream
or the thought of death at death's door.


2.

The first tear fell in a sluiced rush
of diminuendo. Her keepsake,
the necklace of St. Christopher,
mid-flight to the arch of her neck.
Just kissed, yet cold. Like twilight.

Avalanche

I created this, ice axe in hand.

Clipping for the light glow
In the crack of a cornice,
Slap-down, waiting on handle-
Tremors that never come.

The slow-auschwitz continues.

I can feel the earth move.
My innocent earthquake-shake,
Our snow-drift plucking up
Courage, sieveing, slow-slow.

And large. Large as anything.

The beauty of it growing:
Shift slides picking up speed,
Rows of light gods vanishing
To reappear within shadow.

All the while falling, falling.

In the stills of consequence,
Distant mountains look on,
Their stand-offish back talk
Snippets I do not care for.

I stop and imagine how it ends,

Hidden in the town below,
The people tucked in cabins,
Not understanding death
Or the roll of a mountain,

No, it will not reach them -

The hold and halt of terrain
Set to spare life this time,
Gradient and slope not yet
Severe enough to sink so low.

But now I know destruction:

What of this next mountain?
What of this breakable life?

Underearth

And then there was the underearth,
But not the same heartfelt sod
We read about as it grabbed St.Kevin
When he sat outstretched and stilled;

Nothing so gracious and forgiving
As the imagined dirt beneath his knee
Taking root there, almost comforting,
Holding to structure his misfortune.

No. This soil takes and does not return,
Folds and then refolds at the whim
Of some god awful dig-man with hands
Numb to the final shiver. The scratch
Of his spade a hollow drum roll
That will shake once and once again.

Beached

Beneath doubled skies, between grays,

Catching the slow-slow backwash
Against the shore, oceans fold

Into quartz and a thousand citrine suns
Flesh in shades of salted yellow;

As I dream her skin within the shingle:
Shimmering. Rescattered. Delicate.

Beyond horizons, footprints follow
As if a row of strangers, stretching

Until they are neither here, nor there.