Poems from Where All Ladders Start
Ghost Train
I want to sit beside you in a darkened space.
A cinema trip would be clichéd, so let’s dart
out to Bray and climb into a carriage
after paying the price, our thighs touching
as we trundle into the man-made cave of spooks.
A fair few of my tribe are ghosts now:
father, mother, sister, friends and a slew
of aunts and uncles. You too have an abacus
of lost ones. If we meet them, will we clutch
hands as they pop up, whispering Vaya con Díos?
* * *
First published in The Stony Thursday Book (annual print journal), Winter 2020
Southside Shrub
Plucking and tossing a mauve mophead,
Dad walks through the garden gate.
Hydrangea! Hydrangea! he says
on the way to the train station.
Then we smile and wave,
Mum smiles and waves.
Before school starts
on a summer morning,
the rose-edged estate is busy –
overshadowed by Killiney Hill.
Overshadowed by Killiney Hill,
the rose-edged estate is busy
on a summer morning
before school starts.
Mum smiles and waves,
then we smile and wave
on the way to the train station.
Hydrangea! Hydrangea! he says:
Dad walks through the garden gate
plucking and tossing a mauve mophead.
* * *
First published in The Irish Times, May 2019
Clonmacnoise
Steer yourself to the bog
centre of this island, pilgrim
in a metal box on wheels.
Drive to the Shannon Callows
where our longest river crosses
the Esker Riada, ‘The Great Way’.
Watch the roads get narrower:
be guided by the trail of turf sods
towards St. Ciarán’s settlement.
On your arrival, listen to a band
of young German accordionists
playing a slow ‘Danny Boy’.
Imagine thousands here:
monks, scholars and artisans,
the occasional saint or king.
Admire the Celtic crosses
and the two round towers, piercing
a cloudy mid-July sky.
Send your sins in a whisper
from one side of the arched doorway:
your confessor will hear them.
Place your hand in the wart well
if you want the growths to disappear –
trust that they will.
Walk the extra half mile
to the nuns’ church, and wonder
if its location was by choice.
Leave all these ruins
behind, your last sight
a charm of goldfinches.
* * *
First published in ‘The Honest Ulsterman’, February 2023 issue
The Food of Love (senryu sequence)
‘If music be the food of love, play on.’ – William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
from the cloister
blind O’Carolan’s notes rise —
sunny morning
* * *
a warm wind
flexes the ash tree’s branches —
his set of three reels
* * *
the sweet notes reach me
before he rounds the corner
– local singer
* * *
afternoon gig –
the familiar jig time
played on two guitars
* * *
rip-roaring raga –
the musician breaks a string
on his Indian lute
* * *
salmon sunset –
the drummer tests his jazz brushes
on the pine table
* * *
These senryu were first published in the following journals:
The BHS Members’ Anthology 2023, The Belfast Review, 2024 & Presence, 2022
Loaves
(after Brendan Kennelly)
We have not yet met
though we’re in the same place:
these things take time.
With nothing to contain us,
we spread ourselves
to the limits of free space.
My crust pushes towards
yours – this heat stretch –
till there’s nowhere else to turn.
With our expansion
complete, the only
option now
is to yield
to the inescapable kiss.
* * *
Note: A kissing-crust is the portion of the upper crust of a loaf which has touched another loaf in baking
- First published in North Irish Issue, Winter 2018
- Anthologised in Romance Options, Love Poems for Today (Dedalus, 2022)
I am not a Gardener
but am destined instead to look at others’
beds with admiration and envy.
I am not a gardener
though green-fingered men
have cultivated me.
I am not a gardener
though my Christmas tree lives
and keeps growing in the spring.
I am not a gardener –
more of a garden upkeeper –
but strawberries still appear.
I am not a gardener
so how do I explain this balcony’s show
of lavender, begonias, wildflowers?
* * *
First published in The Honest Ulsterman, June 2023