A selection of my poems about nature and the environment and environmental issues such as climate change and the exploitation of natural resources
Solstice
it is the longest night
and the sleepless hours
pass like slow trains
in the passing carriages
we see only our own
cold faces looking back
we have news of a variant
strain of the virus
they are closing the ports
and dawn comes
with a call from my son
to say he can’t be
home for Christmas
the light is ice
a sky like solder
over a bleak and barren land
breathing broken glass
mending hearts
this land of one man funerals
and window visits
gods of the field and air
hearken to our call
ring of stones encircle us
light of dawn defend us
with soft rain feed us
we have need of tenderness
December 21st 2020
Like starlings
like starlings in the cold
a mighty murmuration
driven by the wind
winding up and down
spinning on their wings
no hope to comfort them
and no relief
or like cranes
sighing as they fly
like arrows of air
out of the shadows
shadows come
master who are these
battered and turned in the breeze
as black as night
the lost people
and he replied
you know them all
and pity caught me
like a hand to my throat
and I was lost
December 3 2020
A pair of blue eggs
i
outside our door
the fragile shells
traces of albumen
the sawtooth edge
breached by the beak
a starling’s egg
nested in the eaves
somewhere the nestling
waits for food
one day soon we’ll
see him wing it
into the morning
his yellow beak
his turquoise flash
his geiger-counter trill
his tail-less arse
ii
you are breaking eggs
into a glass bowl
scones will occur
the oven hums
light filters through
the bones of
the chestnut tree
and across the valley
picks out the cambric
blossom of the thorn
through the open door
the blackbird’s
liquid chorus
evening is the codex
on which nature writes
we read it slowly
with all our senses
April 20th 2020
Last night's Wrack
last night’s wrack of dragon-headed kelp
a thousand blackened carcasses
a wave against the early morning sun
we have driven down to catch the light
on bare sand and broken boats
and have caught ourselves unawares
overwhelmed by
the profusion of decay
we stand in the wind on the cliff-top
and feel ourselves pitching quietly out
so slowly we think
gravity is an end in itself
a kind of beauty
kiss me or we’re lost you cry
with heavy hearts we’ll fall
down among the dragons
March 2nd 2020
Ardnahinch Strand, East Cork
In my invincible summer
In my invincible summer
I walk the fields
skirting the frozen pools
stepping daintily
like an excited foal
in the broken lines
of a wintery morning
with no grand gesture
the old year is dying
through the ice
the stubble tells
of harvest past
and golden days
and the hill rises
like a breaking wave
a buzzard circling
in the steel grey
three thousand cases
is the estimate
we circle the same place
but we’re far from home yet
December 29th 2020
From Smugglers In The Underground Hug Trade 2021
Even the orcas
Even the orcas
are turning on us
they come up from the deep
to tell us to slow down
to knock the steering out
because they know where we’re going
even if we don’t
and it’s over the edge of the world
and we’re taking the world with us
they leave us swinging in the wind
directionless
or at least rudderless
drifting drifting
I do not know much about gods
but I think the orcas
know more about us
than we do about them
and they keep it to themselves
by and large
we are in the dogwatch of this plague
the late cold hours
and dawn comes slow
a pale light across water
the golden sands
birds resting in the brack backwaters
the ochre marl of the cliff face
light bending through scrub ash and sally
the papery bark of the birch
landfall at daylight
something to look forward to
in the turn of the year
if the year turns
if the orcas forgive us
October 8th 2020
The beach
For Liz, on the day that walking
on the beach was forbidden
i
the beach is an occasion
a skin scalded by sun
a bird-speckled distance
the ghost of oceans
a stone beaten
a cold star fallen
the beach is an
open aperture
a mirror silvered
its future is glass
the beach is a passage
a kelpy fastness
in bronze and brass
a twisted strand of blond
netted in hexagons
a shield and a scimitar
a stony-hearted invader
the beach escapes
every definition
a landscape
that shifts and sings
a happening
between earth and sea
a constant inconstancy
ii
the beach is our past
it burns like a phosphorous flare in memory
we recall minutiae
the hexagonal shapes left by the waves
the sheets of sand as smooth as paper
the marl of the ancient bog
rising through sand after gales
the revelation of buried field marks
the way the sea takes kelp from the reefs and flats and heaps it
the small waves rolling and tripping and dissipating
once an old lady gave me a list she had made
of all the ships that sank along this coast
that ran on rocks and broke up all hands lost
that ran onto the sand and were pillaged
that broke their backs in big Atlantic storms
that mistook the light or were shown a false light
that strayed in fog
great sails and masts and shrouds and stays washed up like kelp
boilers hissing and groaning on the Smiths Rocks
the savagery of sea-broken bones and hearts against the impervious shore
cargoes of brandy or silk or cotton gone to Davy Jones
or lining the bellies or pockets of the local breakers
think not of the sea as a place of sport my mother used to say
she lost her brother and her uncle to it
their names carved on the family stone Lost At Sea
the sea is nobody’s friend
but we speak of the strand
where we are still sure of foot
though the sands shift and every tide is change
though we place stones in a pile to mark a favourite spot
and cannot find it on the following day
though we return a hermit crab to a certain pool
and the pool is gone when we return
though the strand is haunted by the ghost of a buried bog
and the cliffs fall down and white wounds flare along the shore
though the sea eats the land and makes sand of it
and every day some dead creature makes landfall at our feet
still we know where we stand
and only when we venture into the summer sea
stumbling over hidden shelves and sinks and broken stones
are we aware of the scars of history
March 28th 2020
Lament for the future
i
swifts drill for darkness in a cliff face
the sea eats gravel & spits sand
the limitless fertility of the tide race
who believes in bladder-wrack barnacles
hermit crabs in their hard hats
lined with perfectly symmetrical
mother of pearl turning in spirals
towards an infinitely small
inner space busy with nothingness
the singing silence of the inner ear
& the sea in the sound
the inter-tidal suck in the stones of the pier
the revenant of ancient hurricanes
a million miles distant
human brain-shaped whelk egg-cases
dogfish fin-whales & dolphins
the future is in the rock pools
a single limpet contains the elements
necessary for everything to begin again
never mind if this beginning
ends in a creature that cannot sing
ii
you hear the brass of the bell
I hear the wood of the frame
you worry about my ears
but hearing wood is an old skill
the grain is a muscle clenched
a great tree’s equilibrium
hear its agony of holding on
a fist in the dying earth
the clock-case remembers the stone
the bell recalls the foundry
time wound into the spring
is the universe running down
iii
we saw a stone broken
a line of quartz
dividing
the two sides
of a thirty million
year old split
an abstract pencil
drew this
declaration
to show how late
we are on the scene
how short our stay
a camera’s blink
in our geology
a self-timed snap
of people considering
the coincidence
of the most
fragile species
on the planet
& this ancient
slingshot
against our tenure
even stones die
of broken hearts
even planets
fall apart
their only mark
a nervous outburst
in space-time
oh who will watch
the universe
when we’re not here
our ships floating
forever
in the godless dark
no one to read
the empty text
no receiver
of wrecks
the batteries
exhaust themselves
trying to be nice
& then time itself
in the last tick
& afterwards 0