THE LAST FIRE

THE LAST FIRE

You gathered sticks

To bathe the night with fire,

You, in your element

Smiling watery eyes;

Happy sighs – as you bent.

The next day your soul gathered

Over your cold body

To be buried under sticks and clay….

JUMPING STREAMS

JUMPING STREAMS

I think of childhood
Jumping streams.
A day that began in
Day dream. I loved
That mid-air feeling
A shore footed landing
On the other side.

Life was like that at
Twelve years old
Bravely challenging
Balancing harvesting
Wonder. Put me in a
Class in a uniform
Of cute chatter
And I fell mid-stream.

I stood there among peers
In their neat clipped
Lives, along stuffy
Corridors. Out of
This whole class,
I was always first,

Out through the door when
The bell woke me.

KILLRUDDERY

KILLRUDDERY

Beneath the elders

Where bumble bees

Lose themselves

In flowering thyme;

I lie down in dew-soaked ease.

And dog-rose is the scent

That makes my spirits rise

In the kingdom of the low –

Flying bird.

I take comfort on the mossy soil;

  

Last years leaves sweet;

Damp In the wing-tipped breeze,

To ease my mind and soothe

My brow;

In dappled light my speckled thoughts take flight…

And the worm-seeking thrushes

Make a rustling sound

Where life goes on

Underground –

Beneath the earthy mound.

http://www.maryevans.com/poetryblog.php?post_id=6232

TAIGH NA GAREACH

TAIGH NA GAREACH

Many ‘Murphy’s’ in the area...
So nick- names slipped off the tongue;
His suited a way of believing in
Fairies where he fished off the rock
At Lough Currane. ‘Taigh na gareach’,
‘Tag of the Fairies’.

Not one could convince him to change
His belief in ‘magic & luck’,
Not even his brother ‘Cod Murphy’,
So where he fished off a rock in
The mountains, the name
 ‘Taigh na gareach’ stuck...


https://issuu.com/threedropsfromacauldron/docs/three_drops_from_a_cauldron_-_issue_b80d705046391e

MOURNING

MOURNING

I think, it was the winding lane that did it – the one
Lined with daffodils: Wordsworth would have approved.
I had my own poem set out – open like the cupped

Yellow offerings; perhaps I’d have added in: Sun-trapped
Stone steps - coming down from the white-washed loft;

And what the house held:
The bed-rails, the heavy wardrobe and ancient drawers,
The lace of the curtains, and the old dresser,
A range to help a kettle sing, and streams,

Of light across the lanolin floor – peeping
From wide window-sills, with hills outside.

Now, I have to content myself with the fact that - we have
A bigger vegetable patch here, than the little fenced one
At the back of the cottage we nearly had –
I knew the man who lived there once.

 

SCAVENGED

SCAVENGED

They picked the ribs clean
Inside the frozen carcass
No waste in nature.

Published here: https://sites.google.com/site/adamrudden/poem-of-the-month-march-2015

THE VOYAGING VESSEL

THE VOYAGING VESSEL

Even as the tides subside
I glide the horizon like a black-
Backed gull.
Waves of awe unleash
A various world of

Words I find deep in the folds
Of a sail-weathered wind
Freedom
Like golden grain in my hand
Rolling the currents to fly
Against a limitless sky…

I harbour the salt and the scent
From bays of seafaring faces,
The sea of pearled possibilities
Where beneath the rim and the rhythm
Coral, shells and speckled fish
Water me with colour.



https://tintean.org.au/2017/02/06/poetry-13/

THE LAST FIRE

THE LAST FIRE

You gathered sticks
To bathe the night with fire,
You, in your element
Smiling watery eyes;
Happy sighs – as you bent.
The next day your soul gathered
Over your cold body
To be buried under sticks and clay….

https://sites.google.com/a/lapwingpublications.com/lapwing-store/helen-harrison