Clovis

Recent archaeological finds suggest Stone Age men from
Europe somehow crossed the Atlantic and discovered
America in 14000BC.


I imagine him standing on loose rocks
on a damp shore at dawn in a grey mist.
Caribou pelt shielding him from the cold,

the dark fur of his hood hiding his eyes.
An open canoe rising and falling.
Seal hides straining, stretched tight like a drum-skin

over a framework of bone and birch bark.
No doubt his friends that had gathered that day
huddled together out of the spray

and raised their arms to salute those first strokes
that took him out further beyond the surf.
Or maybe it was a small flotilla

with flint clovis spears and arrowheads stowed –
simple tools that carved them into time for evermore
with the corpses of giant bear and sloth.

But I would like to think that the ice fields
spread further south than ever that season.
And whilst hunting on the passing ‘bergs

he decided to continue onwards
striding freely from one to the other
to see just quite how far he could take things.

Then, some months later, weak and close to death
he fell ashore, sick of ice and seal flesh.
After wringing out his salt sodden boots

he sat silent, alone by a small fire
staring up at the moon’s silvery beams.
And beyond that, stars.

Poetry Reading By Bernard O'Donoghue

Last weekend I went to my first poetry reading. It was part of the Beverley Literature Festival. Bernard discussed his experiences of reading and growing up with books in Ireland. He came across as a lovely man, very knowledgeable (as you would expect I suppose).
I was amazed by the questions the audience put to him and I must admit, most of it went over my head.
But his poetry was superb. It was the first time I had heard or read any of it. Listening to him reminded me of something Billy Collins said about writing for the reader - how it was like inventing a new card game. If you turn all the cards face up, then it's too obvious and there's no game. But likewise, if you deal them all face down, all you have are 52 bits of obscurity. Bernard seems to understand this perfectly and for me his poems have a perfect balance of obscurity and clarity. He made it sound so easy. But of course this kind of writing only comes with skill and craftsmanship. Next reading? June 6th - Carol Ann Duffy!

Casing the Joint

As a boy I did not sit dreaming
of a more exciting existence.
I simply pulled my black mask down
over my eyes, raised my weathered
garden cane sword and ran fearlessly into the sunlight

or the cold teeming drizzle of the street.
Today I am one ant in the line,
grounded by the air bag, held back
by the embrace of the seatbelt.
As I wait to pass this red light

I feel the mask of my childhood dropping
once more onto the bridge of my nose.
And then it is just me
and the three hundred horses of a ’75 Charger,
waiting with the rats and yesterdays newspapers

in a damp alley by a jewellery store.
Or maybe by a pair of black iron gates,
in the shadows of some country house.
Its owners turn on their mattresses in the moonlight,
whilst downstairs - among the riding boots and fly fishing reels

- men like me listen to the clicking tumblers of the safe
and pocket their priceless pieces of art.
And now in our kitchen with its leaking kettle
bills, junk-mail, I wonder…
how long can I keep my secret double life from the both of you?

A Teacher's Holiday

As you are packing your cases
and wishing for nicer sunglasses,
the primary school teachers are boarding
the flights of their stairs and fastening the

seatbelts of their office doors
- typically a neglected bedroom with
a cheap desk and a floral roller-blind.
And there they will sit amid the damp laundry,

used coffee cups and unopened junk mail,
trying to create a gourmet feast from just some
broken bits of egg shell and a rusty colander.
The commanders and generals, hidden deep

inside their bunkers, have set the objectives,
decided the targets at which these infantrymen will strike.
And then with no thought as to how all this
will be implemented on the ground,

without so much as single shell of ammunition,
these men and women are booted unceremoniously
from the tail cone of the airplane
to faithfully do their duty. To blindly soldier on.

While you rinse the beads of sweat
from your sun bronzing skin in the pool,
the teacher sits under the glare of a sixty watt lamp,
doggedly trying to spin silk from straw

to tell the wood from the trees.
They also say you cannot make a silk purse from a sow’s ear,
and that you simply cannot juggle soot.
Yet this is what the primary teacher does,

one week in every eight, six times a year.
Holed away in their dimly lit little rooms,
listening to your footfalls beneath the window.

You on your way to do whatever is it is you do
on all those evenings off.

Evenings

I arrived home this afternoon
to find you already back from the park.
I showered with our playful little girl
while you made my dinner.

Refreshed, I ate from a plate you had washed,
in a lounge you had cleaned,
while you turned town her bed
and warmed her milk.

As she drank, I watered our patchwork lawn
and the applause of flowers you had potted.
Then later, behind the curtains
I read her the tale of the nutbrown rabbit,
as you talked to the TV and marked my papers.

The sun bowed, the cool air came in.
I tapped in my numbers, as you stretched out.

And then we were together.
You reclined in the easy chair
and I hunched on the sofa,
over a notepad, straining to see
in the dim light of our evening.

The Pavlovian

This morning I am in the woods.
An odd tribesman in pseudo-fleece jacket and boots,
wanting an inside view of things
Rigid timber poles of Scots Pine
stand motionless,
while their lofty crowns sway

in a breeze unfelt down here.
The ocean in a sea-shell.
Squirells – with so much to get through today-
dart erratically through branches, over ground,
as if trapped in a glass bubble,
frantically searching for an exit.

Hammers twitching inside a jazz piano.
I was going to tell you
about this brittle brown carpet
of dried fern.
How it blows away as dust
under my weight.

About the flirtation of the sun and shadow
and the tension in the spaces in between.
But the air is suddenly salted
with the dry smokiness of bacon,
crackling and sizzling from our small cabin.
I become a fish on a hook,

going belly up,
no more to fight a losing battle.
I toss my guns in the dirt,
clasp my hands behind my head,
fingers intertwined
and prepare to sign a full –
very un-poetic – confession.

An Apology

All that remains in this garden
of the pond I exhumed last spring
is a bare sandy circle
edged by a flat tessellation
of trapezoidal stones.

Squatting on the rim of that ring today
was a frog, all horny eagerness and expectation,
oily wetsuit sparkling in the sun,
who clearly hadn't heard.

A slow, deep breath in
through a pair of forward mounted blow-holes,
eyes slowly closing as he savours the moment.
Then the twin pneumatic pistons of his legs
sent him high into the air.
All limbs extended into a very X-rated X.

I can hardly speak of the disappointment
I felt for that seemingly insignificant amphibian.
The guilt I felt as the soft silver keel of his underbelly
hit the dry gravel with a dull thud,
rather than a long awaited wet splash,
followed by the pure chimes of water droplets
falling back to ripple the surface.



How could I have known,
that as I stood waist deep in silt
under new green leaves, bailing years of neglect,
that my actions would bring such sadness.

So then what then of the lawn,
lovingly mowed just this morning?

The neighbour, hauling old concrete
who I did not stop to help?

And what of this pen,
frantically scrambling along
the blood red veins of this page?