IN DREAMS

Wouldn’t you wonder where you wander

In that dreamlike state,
For sleep ; the perfect traveller,
No luggage, no boarding gate.

All that’s needed is a vacant space

In the carriage of the mind.
Reality, if that exists!
Jettisoned behind.

When the prevailing wind is from the East
You can steer it to the South
And hold your breath forever
And spit the foul one out.

If you don’t enjoy sham Christmas
And the Wise Men come too soon,
You can tell the trio to sling their hooks
And call again in June.

Your hair can be tossed in a nightmare
And set straight again in dreams,
Reality’s a long dead foe
And everything is what it seems.

CHILDREN

All children are experiments,
The more they offer, the more father takes,

And righteous mother lays down her own law
To try to use child to correct own mistakes.

The child has a right, by right
To dislike its own father or mother
Or uncle or aunt, parson or priest,
Cousin or granddad, or any other.

Parents presume to own their offspring,
To decree and dictate style and behaviour,
How to comb their hair, sit on a chair,
And tell them the name of their saviour.

A lonely child is the only child,
What chance to think or maybe grow?
Target of lasers, same parents once lovers,
Strangled of sight and the right to know.

If children can’t do what they like
Why should parents and adults and others?
The tragedy was and is the long curse
That children grow big to be fathers and mothers.

RING DONG FOREVER

Farrell's machine laid the peat out in rows
of brown and black mixed, no racism here.
We felt the fresh sod, squeezed it through fingers,
the texture of  butter; turf new year.
And we watched it for weeks, three or four,
then nodded agreement, its fit to foot,
the fussy ones started, the patient ones waited
for more days and rays and Leavy's, the hut.

I made it before,  time ago with my father
and neighbours and grey shaggy ass
and bottles of tay and fat bacon sandwich
when hay was hay and silage was grass.
And we earned ten shillings, half of a pound
to spend as we pleased in Maggie Murray's
for a week of six days and sunburnt neck
in a time of no nights, just eighteen hour days.

They said it was hardship then, back-breaking toil,
And now it was cushy, time to spend in the shade.
With tractors and trailors and steel transport boxes
and no-one can tell you the price of a spade
or a slane or a billhook or grim reaper scythe,
or a half pound a tay or a quarter of plug,
But fire's still fire and roast red and warming
one bog-hole behind, one three-quarter dug.

WHERE TO NOW?

Marooned on an island in the sea of time

Surrounded by the functional furniture of life,
Where only the future is not forbidden,
Sin and innocence wrapped in layers of strife.
The ever shifting battleground of difference
Confronts me now, no sides to take,
The powerful pull of vague memories
Helps me to sleep; keeps me awake.
 
Starboard is the now, leeward is my haven,
Fore or aft? The querulous choice,
There are times in life when lies are a kindness,
Alone in the world, time takes its time, one voice.
Yet time gets away from me, still it’s always near,
Slow as molasses on a downward slope,
Perfection is as close as the horizon,
Today is crying time; yesterday, laughter was the hope.
 
Where to now for my sundered soul?
How to listen with the ear of the mind,
The grind-stone; my constant coat-of-arms,
Can’t know what to seek, what to find!
Who can paint a portrait of the wind?
Who can tell the stringer from the strung?
Everything new in this world is dated,
Songs yet to be written have many times been sung.
 
I tarry and I ponder on my island home,
The biggest lie of all, my home-made truth,
No future in the past, I must go on
On penance path, to trepidation’s booth.
If I could leap across my sun-dried shadow
I might clamber up grey shingles on far shore,
Fate advised I might go somewhere else,
I told her I had lingered there before.

 

 

 

MY TREASURE

From cock-crow to Tilley lamp
Counted my treasures,
Brought out from the safe
Of my soul, one by one.
A sliver of violet
Fresh from a rainbow,
A smile for each day of the week
Stacked up, healing breath of the sun.

The smell of fresh hay,
A thousand years old,
Caress of beech leaf
Homeward bound,
Miracle mushrooms,
Soft as marshmallows
Slipping up through pores
In the ground.

Eva Cassidy’s golden voice
Bathing in early morning rain,
Newcastle Forest at dusk
Model of Heaven in green,
Gambolling lamb,
Flash of brown trout
Side-glances of love
Heart stopping; too seldom seen.

And I packed up my treasures
In a gold genie bottle
To let them get close
To each other by night.
At new dawn as an alchemist
Pulled out the stopper
You flew out and filled up
My senses and sight.

(For Smokey on Valentine’s)