Selected Poems
The First Rod:
Mackerel at Inis Oírr
Fugit Amor
Suntrap
Sweet Afton
Lucy’s Song
Sand Goddess
The Opal
New Year’s Eve
Spring Cleaning
***
The First Rod:
Mackerel at Inis Oírr
Cast the line off the pier,
summer nights
into dark stillness,
read the dusk blind,
Atlantic waters at full tide.
Wrist so deft and light
arching the throw
high and wide now,
all six flies kiss
the black surface like stars
shooting without trace
where a shoal
in its own sweet hour
clots and ripples a current
to the hands, charged
at the least quiver
to reel in the bowed line
amid whoops and cries,
at pains to land
the weight of this prize,
wriggling and twitching
with silvery light.
***
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Fugit Amor
At the Musée Rodin I looked for us
among the lovers. We were never that
fierce, a couple twinned in flight,
white marble bodies all delicate curve
back to back lying across air. And yet.
How those arms reach over his head,
seize her shoulder, her breast,
how she strains beyond his hands
free and fleet as a bird. They were
once a world lost, abandoned flesh
and in that searing rush how could they
not fall apart? Look at mouths
averted, bodies caught in space.
He is cast over her, facing the heavens,
she is facing earth. Stretched
on that rack, desire holds them
still, governs her tongue, consumes
him. Here, see how love fares
beyond death, tender as hell,
transports like doves’ wings?
***
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Suntrap
After tea, in the front yard the old man
asks for my hand, the hand of a child.
He wants to show me a magnifying glass
the closest thing he has to a toy,
and I’m bored, though my palm under it
is pink, fantastic. Now he dips
the silvery rim as if he’s fishing air
to trap the sun on newspaper, angling it
closer so it smoulders and takes fire,
and I learn for the first time how to burn.
***
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Sweet Afton
Burnt incense at my throat,
the flicker of a brightening candle,
I watched the priest
raise a scrupulous hand,
to swing the silver thurible.
A row of heads bowed.
And going home in the car
my father dipped headlights
and slowed to enter our gate
past a black Morris Minor
backed to the grassy river–
Reilly’s hand ventured under tweed
all the way up nylon stockings,
coming to grips with
the fluid insides of thighs,
her head thrown back,
she inhaled a Sweet Afton–
unaware of a passing car,
the wide eyes of a girl
in darkness closing a gate
held by the red light
of a cigarette.
***
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Lucy’s Song
for Lucy Partington, murdered in 1973,
aged twenty-one years
Uncover my bones, long dead and clean,
The moon of my skull that gleams in the mire,
Hold me to your breast, carry me unseen
From this vile place, where I have been
Dismembered for years, a brutal lair,
Uncover my bones, long dead and clean.
Blood of my blood, this is no time to keen,
Work by the colour of the dawn air,
Hold me to your breast, carry me unseen.
From the mouth of hell, unthread my spine,
Rib cage, pelvis, sacrum, in order,
Uncover my bones, long dead and clean.
From a chest of oak, let goodness shine,
A jar of honey, music of a choir,
Hold me to your breast, carry me unseen.
Sister, my sister, your love is mine,
I move with you, the silence is clear,
Uncover my bones, long dead and clean,
Hold me to your breast, carry me unseen.
***
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Sand Goddess
On the beach at Smerwick
a figure scooped out of sand-
breast, navel, genitals,
decorated with spirals of shells,
that stove light like
breakers on the shore.
Eyes, nose, mouth, stones.
Seaweed green hair.
There for the spoiling as if
she were the same
as any other castle.
What man and woman divined
a goddess from their play
leaving soundless joy
in the air about her?
Has she no name? Could it be
Duibhne of the black hair
come to restore us to history?
Children take turns lying
in the valley of her thighs
as if birthed from her womb,
and ferried all at once
in the boat of her knees,
they row the stream over stones,
jump out to snuggle at her side,
ask if it’s possible to get inside her,
failing that, gingerly lift
the shell of her nipple,
take an eye out of her head
leaving her matter-of-factly blind,
their touching at first
awed by the reality
that a woman is a body
they have never been this close to,
and finally that a woman is a body
they can dismantle.
***
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The Opal
The jeweller in New Hampshire
turned opals on his palm,
focused a telescopic light
strapped to his forehead
on milk-white, blue-green, crimson,
like a miner at a seam
exploring a vein
along its length with fingertips
or working deep in the hill
to touch cracks in ironstone.
One he called fire
showed a hair-split
invisible when turned in the light
as the ocean bedrock at the Flaggy Shore
impinged with sunset
where we sat against the wall
kissing in the warm dark.
The air was silent assent.
A chain slid on my neck
and you retrieved the clasp.
I looked down
knowing a day might come
when I would turn
to see half the opal gone,
or the entire stone.
***
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New Year’s Eve
My sisters were gone to a dance.
I could hear church bells tolling
three miles away. It carried me
to my knees in the dark,
unhinging the window latch
to open out the casement
on frost glistening in moonlight,
satin along a slate roof,
the rustle of a cow asleep,
my body naked in the rush of cold
under night things, my head
turned by nothing except stars.
***
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Spring Cleaning
On the top shelf
a wire of household bills
keeled like a spinning top,
your missal fat as a tick
with mortuary cards and prayers,
a Cadbury’s box of letters
you read fragments from,
knitting patterns (Grace Kelly
blondes, FOR MEN in cable sweaters).
Everything from used stamps
for the missions to
paper clippings
spilled across the table,
recipes for boiled fruitcake,
blancmange, and how to keep
a soufflé from dropping in the oven.
In the end something escaped
by accident. My face blushed
at what it meant. Clipping
after clipping of old newsprint
on COPING WITH DEPRESSION.
***
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