APRICITY

How does it come to end?

This postcard beauty: snow-clad skeletons

bent under the weight of winter.

A skyline of relentless pine and fir,

with arms bowed down to meet the ground.

The frozen stream encased.

 

Our compacted track runs out,

a last stroke of dried-up pen on blank page.

Beyond where the boot prints fade, one more step

leaves us knee high, struggling

to obtain some purchase. Clumsy,

surrounded by icy stillness.

 

For no birds sing and other creatures hide,

bear their bodies lightly.

Sunshine thaws this day; we listen

to its melting, do not foresee

the griefs not yet begun,

when we no longer hear the frost return.

 

i. 2023

NOW LOOK WHAT YOU’VE STARTED

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