Saturday, January 27, 2007

Promised


Promised

The garden paths
Could lead you anywhere
The man said
Eagle eyed
The twists and turns
Old hat now
A matter of fact
And the soul stuff
Out the back routine
A breeze
The location was
Everything
And the leaves
Scurrying at your heels
A key
Nowhere to be seen.

A poem set in a pub
in Cambridge.
Photograph: taken from
the old graveyard at Moylagh
Co. Meath. 2006

Saturday, January 20, 2007

In the beginning


In the beginning.

Best practice now
Had fair exchange
Exalted virtues
Order of the day
And bag your
Twopence worth
The balance only
Kept for sport
What odds?
We're at the
Crossroads now
Call either side
The fittest and
Select divide
Make Ready! watch
The lines engage
Then split the difference
They behave the same.
A bit of truth in the above?
Photograph: The river Shannon
at Athlone. 1996.

Saturday, January 13, 2007

Wild Things


Wild Things.

In the half light
Between night and day

Some fractured part
To celebrate diversity
They play

Ghost dancing
In an Indian Summer
The ones we couldn't
Tame.

Before the whole
Damn thing is over
And everone's
The same.
Photograph: The old graveyard at Moylagh
Oldcastle Co.Meath. Summer 2006.

Saturday, January 6, 2007

Beyond this point


Beyond this point


With not the wit to
comprehend
His role in Nature's Play
Quite separate from
the scheme of things
He mastered all
he could survey.
And thinking it
A place that's strange
Of almost infinite resource
Imposed on what he can't
admire, some monument
that's set in stone
To ignorance
And sometimes worse
To those, a plague a curse
Who'd measure what
The profit yeild
To burn the cattle
In the field
And think there nothing
much amiss
What kind of progress this?
Or use to ask
What we have done
When fields and trees
and rivers gone
And those who keep
The Common Good
have left a legacy that read
Caution you must be afraid
Beyond this point
There's Poison Laid.
The Photograpg is a view looking
west from Tara.
Enough said!
The poem is from the time of the foot
and mouth crisis.