Tarmonbarry May 2009

With Cubist strokes, the whistling sun had leant
Into the room and daubed the waking walls
With colour. Lost in delicious content,

My eyes switched open. Somewhere a lusty
Robin announced his news with strident calls
That swiftly unravelled sad night’s dusty

Blanket. Outside the stretching Shannon purred,
Tickled by the fronds of reflected trees
That lined the far shore. Beside me you stirred

Softly beneath the careless cotton sheet,
Like a butterfly inching by degrees
From winter’s cocoon towards summer’s heat.

A moment so true I almost cried in pain,
Knowing that the night would fall again.

But, determined, I lay back and succumbed
And drew imaginary pictures on
The blank expanse of ceiling and hummed
A jaunty tune as hidden heaven shone.

Eulogy

How sharp are now the cleaves upon your face.
The downy hairs upon your softened jaw
Show clear that claims of golden age are base.

Your feeble joints grow weary of the race.
Your back is bent, your slippered feet are sore
And can’t maintain the unrelenting pace.

Ornaments stand proud on crocheted lace
A life displayed in china – nothing more
Is needed to exhume each holy place.

Arms that cradled children in good grace
Now drip with skinny skin and bruise till raw
When lightly held in sorrowful embrace.

Justice flees and leaves no mortal trace.
The runner will not make it to fourth base,
The struggle more important than the score,
The wish to sleep more potent than the chase.

Weed

Is this a plant or is’t a weed?
My tender fingers feel the stalk,
Caress the leaf. Should I just walk
Away and not commit the deed?
My trembling hands begin to baulk.
Did I once plant this living seed?
Is’t better to pull out a plant
Or give a weed its murd’rous head
To strangle others in their bed?
Once done, ‘tis too late to recant.
No wonder God shrinks back with dread
And shirks the role of commandant.
The greater good? I give a scowl
And weakly reach out for the trowel.

This morning shone the sun again

This morning shone the sun again.
For three days we had plodded round
The dreary house and peered outside,
Tut-tutting at the teeming rain.
For three days we had fought and frowned
And I had yelled and she had cried.
This morning life began afresh.
I padded to the cherry tree,
Once thick with bulbous pregnant fruit,
But lo! the stalks hung destitute,
As hov’ring wasps buzzed round with glee
And gorged upon the juicy flesh.
Now nothing grows in Babylon.
I called to her but she was gone.

The vicious tempest

The vicious tempest flared up very late,
Too late for her to get her washing in,
Life pulls her like a river in full spate.

The rampant gale unlocks another slate.
She starts and draws the beads up to her chin
And prays aloud the storm will soon abate.

She tries to hide the banging of the gate
That crashes ‘gainst the jamb with fearful din.
The vicious tempest flared up very late.

Longevity does not deserve such fate.
Where is the balm to soothe her careworn skin?
Life pulls her like a river in full spate.

Must God destroy whate’er he may create?
Is justice only consequence of sin?
The rampant gale unlocks another slate.

A crackling spark vaults o’er the soot-thick grate
And smoulders on the carpet with a grin.
She prays aloud the storm will soon abate.

Jesus on the wall does not hang straight.
She reaches for another mug of gin.
The vicious tempest flared up very late.
Life pulls her like a river in full spate.

The furies scream their bitter songs of hate.
The picture on the wall begins to spin.
The rampant gale unlocks another slate.
She prays aloud the storm will soon abate.

When I am dead

When I am dead, erect no marble stone
With random clichés writ in gilded font,
But let sweet earth devour my flesh and bone.

My testament is this: I do not want
My lovely life and death to be proclaimed
With random clichés writ in gilded font.

What purpose serves a stone thus cheaply named,
To summarise in bland and hollow words
My lovely life and death? To be proclaimed

A loving husband / father? Do the birds
Attempt, when some poor wretchéd soul keels o’er,
To summarise in bland and hollow words

His time? It means the living evermore
Are bound by guilt to that one maudlin spot.
Attempt, when this poor wretchéd soul keels o’er

And heads off to his chill October plot,
To countenance the grieving souls that none
Are bound by guilt to that one maudlin spot.

Enrich the soil! That’s how things should be done.
And thus I bid you, do not stand and mourn
But countenance the grieving souls that none

Should to that dismal place again be drawn
When I am dead. Erect no marble stone.
And thus I bid you, do not stand and mourn
But let sweet earth devour my flesh and bone.

One yellow leaf

Clinging tightly to the twig
Like a first day child at the school gates,
The one yellow leaf
Shivers in the stiff November breeze.
Inevitability denied
With irrational stubbornness,
It seeks to reverse the flow of rivers,
Travel backwards in time
And snip the umbilical cord of the moon.

Passing by,
Collar upturned and eyes slitted,
I admire its pathetic bravado,
In the same way that the last survivor
Charges the lines of the enemy
With spear upturned.

There is a need for futility
In a world of purpose.

When I pass, the following day,
It is gone,
Shaken loose and scolded on its way,
To join the millions mashed into the earth.
And I feel that I am nearer
My own time of clinging on stubbornly
Against the odds.