FAREWELLS
 
Nora
 
Fresh faced, lively, always ahead.
Never looking sideways, instead
you threw a horseshoe in my path.
‘But I need four’. You didn’t laugh,
intend on the adventure trail.
Your childhood games would never fail
to catch my fancy. Red Riding Hood,
you led me into a dark wood. 
 
But I was grabbed by the Green Hand
before the wolf could get me, and
you faced his sharpened appetite.
Some would say it served you right.
The mercy mission was bogus.
We hadn’t a granny known to us
So, the quest was to no avail.
This life is not a faery tale
 
Horse riding brought you down to earth.
But you preferred boats. The wide berth
of Dublin Bay did not daunt you
if you were your own crew.
You had further horizons than
most people, with your imagination
often stretched beyond what could be
reached. You set your own reality. 
 
Nora, my middle sister, goodbye.
We didn’t always see eye to eye,
I am being behind you. As a boy
you were my leader, my envoy
into a world beyond my grasp.
I wish to follow your last gasp
to where you imagined, a place
of surprise, but at my own pace.
 
They’re crying wolf is not a need.
And no one questions a good deed.
Beasts of prey and humans aren’t confused.
Souls with benevolence are enthused.
Indulgence is an impulse that is pure
and simple; having the allure
of an April shower for spring flowers.
Time is counted in thoughts not hours.
 
On Dalkey Hill you saw it coming:
above you the clouds were running.
the sun broke through with its last rays.
and as twilight fell you were raised
by a ‘disembodied joy that came
from nowhere’; airy nothings reign
in the still of night so a bird
can lighten its thrill to be heard.
 
16/01/2018  
 
Adieux Jeanne Moreau
(1928–2014)
 
My jolie laide in darkest hues,
mood richly woven Biedermeier,
demure the lighting you chose
to knit yourself into a thick
suit so tight that it excludes air.
I’m breathless. You’re anaerobic.
 
Fully formed, and without stage fright,
you skipped past being an ingénue,  
dancing like your mother the light-
fantastique, on your stage debut
at the Comedie, every night
taking your bow with a bored moue.
 
Ma Buckley taught you how to stamp:
Da, Antoine Desiré, how to hop:
And life, how to stand on your hands.
the world is upside down: so, stop
at nothing, girl, and take your chance
as Joan of Arc or a trollop. 
 
Moreau, the New Wave saint of sin:
the maid who unmanned the master:
the go-go between Jules and Jim,
called Catherine (almost named after
your mother). My only regret
you never got to play Colette.
 
Years taught you not to act your age.
Scandal was your school: you couldn’t fail
to shock, and make the world your stage,
scaling life’s slippery spiral ramp
without a hand on the safety rail.
I wait to lick your postal stamp. 

A Wave to Patrick Early
‘If you die in a good mood, all is forgiven’, Montaigne
 
Life was a game you played
with your own rules, broken
only when suffering
fools gladly. Count me in. 
 
The world was your cocktail.
You shook it with laughter,
but knowing what a poisoned chalice
could do to your fellow man,
you shared the bitter cup.
 
Your passing? Passing was your life,
always passing ahead,
tapping the road   
for those following. Potholes 
filled up, tar hardened.
 
You were your own dog
until Rufus puts you on his lead.
And together you were a pair
of old dogs nosing the earth
for terrestrial scraps. 
 
I’m sure when you pulled up
Montaigne’s hand 
was on the brakes,
giving you time for a joke
about regret*. So, all is forgiven’.
 
Not that it was needed.
You were only guilty
of being yourself,
a poet who spoke to
the human condition
 
in intimate conversations.
Rhyme was not your truc.
So, I wish you luck
in the afterlife, I can hear your tut,
‘Truc’ isn’t English, try ‘thing’.
 
And you’d question ‘luck’.
‘Luck is strictly for chancers.
I didn’t take chances.
They took me. God knows
I deserve to be indulged’.  
 
Today the blackbird
battering its wings
on my windowpane
is trying to tell me something.
I’m listening to you.
 
Swimming with Bob Welsh
Paullilles Beach, Summer 2011
 
There’s Bob a-bobbing, a-bobbing in the wild sea.
And in his best Cork accent cries out, ‘Tis poetry’.
The pleasure that he takes is Homeric to me.
 
What Bob calls ‘the sea thing’ is his natural milieu.
Grab-all Bay was his baptism. It’s said that Bob knew
how to swim to Fountains-town before he was two.
 
Even at that age he had the shoulders for the crawl.
Now he decides against Africa. It’s too long a haul.
A seal with a bulldog head, I can hear his high call, 
 
‘You say it’s an abandoned Nobel factory site?
But between you and me, I’d say, it’s still dynamite’. 
He has something by the neck, maybe a water sprite.
 
There’s Bob a-bobbing, a-bobbing in the wild sea.
The sea-monsters have toed the line and let him be.
 
A Pangor for Seamus Heaney
 
Speaking of cats, the charms
they have spelt out with purrs.
So, their comfort is ours,
our aplomb.         
                   And what harms
they’ve quelled in us, what ease
they’ve put us at. Creatures
of philosophy (furs
keep the cold out and please
us).
                 Cum grano salis,
They lick the health from hair
(what vitamins they wear?).
             The sole absolute is
              experience. And you,
              a poet with a corpus
              behind you, before us
              stroke the cat till it mews.
 
A Photograph with Michael Hartnett
 
His smiling face is carefree.
He’s between two smirking men.
Something funny has been said
(by who’s taking it, perhaps).  
 
Somewhere in the room a fire
smoulders turf . No more than that.
A chap with a brandy looks
at us. The others, elsewhere.
 
There’s a draught under the door.
It’s cold outside, and the wind
rattles the tiles on the roof.
Smoke from the chimney tangos.
 
He seems to have forgotten
who he is, can no longer
hear himself speak. Everything
round him is disappearing.     
 
His keeps his eyes tightly shut
until it hurts. An inscape
recorded in a split second.
The shutter opens again.