Ùrlar - by
Yet we outshined them all, /
immortalized among wild rose— /
memory
Abbotsford Bar, Rose Street - by
It’s a museum piece, this place, / the Jacobean ceiling dripped in rich / reds and gold, a dark mahogany bar / solid as a Spanish ship
the long bench - by
For the times aheadwhen we will be as if at either endof the long bench where distance keptis love’s measure and death dancesthe space between when words aloneare not enough and queued memories reach out to touch let longing be a storeof nut and seed that grows each day in strange hibernation readying for its […]
Lifestream - by
At night I am visited by fish, their tiny bodies
pulled from a book.
Clearing The Loft - by
Dismay is waiting behind the door,where across the floor, footprints like hieroglyphschronicle the history of past defeats.Dead clothes, the skin of our former selves,still tumble from broken cases, cratessplit their sides with the books, a three-legged chair,bewildered, leans in the corner where a viper’s nestof jerseys entwines a broken lamp –all the high spume and […]
(Born With) All The Happiness You Will Ever Need - by
an early Beatles’ lyric on a Sunday afternoon
that’s yellow as an egg-yolk
bright as a blackbird’s eye
Life - by
Handbound volume
The Way My Mother Speaks - by
I say her phrases to myself
in my head
or under the shallows of my breath,
restful shapes moving.
The day and ever. The day and ever.
11:00: Baldovan - by
Base Camp. Horizontal sleet. Two small boys
have raised the steel flag of the 20 terminus:
me and Ross Mudie are going up the Hilltown
for the first time ever on our own.
Box Room - by
First the welcoming. Smiles all round. A space
For handshakes.
Remembering Friends Who Feared Old Age and Dementia More than Death - by
No one
Looks forward to being old and alone,
The carer with a spoon,
Visitor gone
In Days of Darkness - by
Two days before your death, you wrote / There is not much to report from here.