From blight or the cold
it has withered

to nothing like a
pretty ornamental,

yet briefly, somehow
more alive.

It settles with an antinode
that slakes the singing reed,

and whining uninvited, scrawls
a misanthropic creed,

but in the stones, the soil of woe
it sows disloyal seed,

as it its own self enthralls,
which greed will unto greed.

 

The only secrets here
pay entry at the gate,

beech roots trip
us over-thinkers,

these rings of stony candour
keep nothing to themselves.

 

[Photo – Monumental by Ailsa Naumann]

Mallards root
‘Neath Prometheus,

Detritus collects
On Grecian urns,

Nikē,
With a missing wing, leaps
Into the void.

No pity for the mayfly,
Or envy for the evergreen,

No moon tonight,
Just drizzle in the street lamps,

Tea lights drift in the window,
And the crows have settled down.

The city is holding its breath,
Fingers drift over silk,

In the time between
The lightening and the thunder,

We conduct our secret affair.

Small graves, poor graves,
Lilies and the Virgin,

Poetry slips
From sagging limestone,

Willow seeds in the May breeze,
Glint, like lingering souls.

Despite a thousand disguises,
As it grows dark she’s revealed,
Humming in a mode only rivers know,

While the trees turn to spilled ink,
And the horses roll in the mead,
Like a heart murmur.

Night doesn’t fall,
but rises from the water,
Drowning the meadow in sound.

What the tide left behind;
barnacles and whale songs,
and a few of the best parts
of my father.

Dún Laoghaire is a stone
lifeboat that rises and falls,
but it’s a long town
for little legs,

so we made a giant
(you only get lighter)
and we made a slow-witted bear,
and we ran in the spray
as the shore gently sank.

Dún Laoghaire is a sand
castle, but the sea
doesn’t scare you.
As it washes away at your feet,
lighter and lighter you become.

 

As five swans, together, lift their weight,
With no little effort, toward the sky,
My eye, yet falls, admiring, nearer ground,
Where, on a branch that overhangs the lake,
Not starting at the egret’s cry,
She, unlocking not a sound,
Who hunting over-long would drown,
Reaches out her drenchèd wings to dry.

A grebe, unseen, submerged, passes near-by,
And on the shore mill pheasants, sheep and rabbits,
But clothed in nature’s charcoal-aged habit,
She busies not herself, but sits to dry.

And so a long in-breath becomes a sigh,
Cutting through all wandering, worried thoughts,
Just to watch her perch upon the over-hanging stalk,
And reach out her drenchèd wings, to dry.

 

Image: Cormorant by Sonja Molina, Instagram @sonlune

 

Chattering echoes and
light rakes the oratory,

Everywhere blossom and soft warmth,
pebbles, litterfall.

A gift of small blisters,
rhythms on the common.

Tenement magnolias
singing in thought, and silently –

Lift up your hearts,
lift up your hearts.