If I Tell Her

If I tell her I'm available
she will look at me and smile
and leave me guessing her intention
whether pleasantly informed
or cynically inspired

It will not do she said
and rescued me from doubt
to blame the clock the calendar the phone
the internet the outside world your gout

I waited wishful of her sage advice
my inner voice cried tell me more
but she stood back as if the play were mine
and so it went reversing roles

The ping-pong ball flew wild
I lunged and with a snap of wrist
returned it to the line
I wonder she said if ritual of sorts
makes intimacy a little easier

I wondered what she meant
ritual? really? like weddings
funerals birthday parties and state dinners?
engagements made or broken?
contracts drawn and quartered
or simply holidays celebrated
carved up with drumsticks
and requisite cranberry relish

Is that what intimacy looks like?
again the space between closer
and further apart like the breathing
like the ribcage like the bird
we call the heart

I Saw a Garden

I saw a garden I was small
bushes flowers weeds were all
the same to me back then
things green woody bright or dead
contained within three walls
we lived in the city
shared a house with other families
though the war was over
several years before

one bathroom for the house
a manual wringer squeezed the water
from the hand-washed clothes
and lurked like some enamel clad
iron beast on the way to the garden

safe in the garden hours alone
though small I'd read King Arthur
his knights his Roundtable
exploits and adventures
robins and sparrows sang out
as I crashed through the thicket
swinging my sword of milkweed stalk
snapped off that morning

cobwebs hung dew laden
like lace set to dry in the sun
I left them there

Boil

An angry sound with no pause at all
between the lip-pressed consonant
and the gush the release of fluid
the non-stoppability innocent enough

when it led to the whistle in the little
passageway my parents called the kitchen
the short window-less hall connecting
our shared bedroom to the front room

did we live there? I only remember solitary
hours crouched into the corner
where the BBC poured forth
Dan Dare Pilot of the Future

or the Light Service of endless classical music
50 years later the sounds with no names
never knowing Bach from Beethoven
until decades of repetition
 
imbued my soul with signatures
of emotions or calculus
all this released by the morning kettle
but those other sorts of eruptions

the doubling of bubble that
came on my knees all too often the knees
given over on Sundays to the hard boards
St. Mary's-on-the-Quay before the Lord

the genuflection that lasts so long
I had to sink back on my heels
till I disappeared from view
and my mother's knuckle would find

the tender place between my wings
and I would rise up once more
for Et Cum Spirit Tu Tuo
or a chime and glimpse

of the bedazzling circle of tasteless bread
and come away rubbing my right-
angled places now dotted with red
swellings the pus-filled follicles

of the post-war diet the boiled
sweets all calm on the surface
the world at peace but our mornings
unto the altar of God with a boil

and so on till I left home

It's Always One of Those Days

It's always one of those days you find yourself
gently winkling some imaginary debris
out of the corner of your right eye
I suppose when a sleeper comes away
on the tip of your index finger
that's reality and you can move on

when I was a kid I read that Crusoe
kept track with marks and when his
indigenous friend aka the slave turned up
he was named Friday

what if we were all named after the day
we all turned up Hi nice to meet you
I'm Sunday...but then there's the question
of turning up which I think more forgiving
than being born or that other cruder
handing on of the genetic line in the term
delivered

no I like turning up because it gives
both the turnee and turner
a balanced sense of presence
but I suppose what you don't want
to hear as you commence your stay
because being here is one thing
telling the tale quite another

what you don't want is someone
to yawn widely and let out of their mouths
the damning phrase Oh it's always
one of those days...as if there couldn't
possibly be anything at all remotely
heroic in your turning up just
an ordinary event

no shooting star just a little dust
found its way to the corner
of somebody's eye and waiting
to be revealed as real
or imaginary

It repeats

It repeats until you drag yourself reluctantly away and begin the search.
It's not in the receiver not in the basket with the remotes nor nestled down
in the cushions of the couch maybe there's time to find one of the other three
the one in the study oh yes still in its cradle a curious name for something
small black and boxy that bawls out its electronic repetitions until you
feed it with your now, your center shifted to another moment...
Thich Nhat Hanh all those letter Hs there for breath he says Thank you
telephone thank you for bringing me into the present but what if it's the
obnoxious neighbor or the annual policeman's fundraiser or the Obama
campaign and right at dinner-time the beans green and soft in their pan
the mashed potatoes and celeriac hot over the steam and yesterday's
brilliant and dynamic flash of presence stripped of its shimmering skin
and sizzling in the pan so thank you is in order I suppose
not just to the repeating cadences of the phone
or the living brilliance the other end of the wireless line
who initiated the call thank you to the way it
the way the present moment we call now keeps teaching and
waking us up poking us to rise up from our slide into hibernation
get out of our caves and blink into the sunlight

What Do We Need

I say these things happen
at night while we lie sleeping
in the morning green rain
picked and gathered

Circle of wicker on the doorstep
open up by twisting and letting go
step out into another turn of the planet
face into the sun even with the clouds
between always something gathering
collecting and passing through

What don't we need
the love of hate will do
the green left to wither
and a helpless pull away
from the center don't you wonder
what would happen

Action now
action places if you please
don't you wonder about
movement without all this
say before our tongues
got tied up and we were left out

Dying of thirst
falling out of bed
out of a tree
out of memory

Evening on the Suez Canal

Evening on the Suez Canal and not a pint of Guinness to be seen
the dark peat strain of an Irish night locked up tight
between the ears a blood red beret keeping the lid
on stars come down to look out from archways and porticoes

rooftops too you might imagine Oh the cream at the top
of a glass sure isn't it the imperial pint you're after
well isn't it the imperial pint of oil that brought us here mate
and what are we doing here at all dressed up for a cold

mountain night with no hope of a turf fire when all the world
burns morning noon and teatime 'Tis cold enough at sundown
sure and the smokin' chimneys no more and the biscuits
broken in the saucer the cows in their lower field

with the old man takin' one last nip before he retrieves
the well-darned socks from the soot-black bar
over the embers 'Tis here in the gut now the fire
spices ground up in the devil's own kitchen

don'tcha know be jaysus paprika and cumin cayenne
and the little children chasin' after our heels
like dark sparks all day where d'ye s'pose
they put their heads where's their mammies

and that flowered water they gave us now back
at the little café them pointing to the vine climbing
up the walls the flowers too comin' down like stars
wouldn't a pint of Guinness go down beautifully now!