remembering Kevin Higgins
From the darkness
of the year’s second Friday
a last-minute call
to eat around our fire pit.
I drag it centre stage.
There’s hasty gathering
of chairs and cushions,
for no more reason than
the number one boyo
is stopping overnight.
No kindling to hand,
we tear thick pages
from a poetry mag
out to be recycled.
One can’t keep everything.
In the careless building
of a tinder pyramid,
one of your originals
lies scrunched somewhere
at the heart of it.
Latent. Ready to ignite.
The week unwinds
with tea and beer and wine;
laughter blunts its sorrows.
At almost safe distance
we divine the rising tongues.
I throw some gash wood on,
set fresh sparks leaping –
wind-whipped, unpredictable –
like tigers in the sky.
Forget tomorrow’s ashes.
Under the waning gibbous light
we tighten scarves about us.
‘I may be wrong’ I hear you say,
yet know you rarely were.
i. 2023
Photo: Mike Shaughnessy, Galway Advertiser
