A rare one

a prehistoric fish looms

ripples and gills

and you are spellbound

gesturing wildly up

summoning a name

of uncharted elements:

a species so rare

until cameras grew smart

to catch a glimpse of it

gliding across your street

you’re late for practice

the band can wait

you exclaim

the magic kicks in

in a child-sized plane

skirting Hurricane Bob

blissfully oblivious

hum of the captain

clenched smiles

as you stare

its depths harbouring

you will dream of

above the school yard

almost surfacing

under its shadow

at whoever will look

from one of your books

stratoculumus asperitas.

it didn’t officially exist

and nimble enough

and here it is

on a Monday night.

but for once

you need to see this!

to whoever will listen.

you dive cloud-high

above New England

five years old

to the low pressure

your parents’

keeping you afloat

at the restless sky

wonderous creatures

your whole life.

An Cuan a Tuath 

Living by the shoulder of the North East coast is An Cuan a Tuath—

North Sea. Held by the earth in its cold, cupped hands, moving 

like a blue tongue between the mute river mouths of even colder lands, 

reciting a litany of flux. It lives here by me now, poised, as then in the photo 

by the soft, bare shoulders of the child I was on Longsands Beach. 

The photo you carried in your purse at all times. I wonder 

was it the last thing you saw before turning out the light? How 

strong was your grip? How steady was your hand? Did you raise your lips 

to my face as you lowered me into the sand?

"please never forget me as the years go by"

The sand envelope sheathing the photo and a note, a litany of grief, 

lowered into the grip of words like the disembodied, pressed leaf. Memory 

begins with our mother, she is that to which we first return; to

warm, cupped hands, never spilling a drop, never dropping a stitch; held out 

like St. Kevin's unconditional nest, cradling the delicate bones of faith. 

Those hands captured this small, sea bleached window, out from which 

I'm looking back at you, An Cuan a Tuath by my side, a litany suspended 

in blue. The tide will find its way in, to sand in photos, to words held in sand

to the dune formed from the delicate, hollow bones crushed in the hand.

Mussels And My Mother

As a child I remember walking by the waves,

hair blowing wild, laughing with my mother.

When mussel shells crunched underneath

our wellingtoned feet, and I could taste

salt on my lips. They were deep blue,

the mussels, and I shouted how I loved this place.

Later, warmer, she smiled with a sadness I couldn’t place

and looked out of the window at the waves.

The walls of the pub were pale blue,

I remember. I had scampi and my mother

ordered mussels. She asked me if I wanted a taste

and I balked at the open shells, the salty bodies underneath.

I watched her eat them deftly, peering from underneath

my fringe, scratched patterns with my fork on the place

mat and wished that I could acquire that particular taste,

and that my hair didn’t fall in stubborn waves.

I remember I wanted people to tell me I looked like my mother,

that I had the same elfin face, that our eyes were the same blue.

We moved on, but I take the sea with me now. Fill each of my homes with its blue,

its wild salt. Jars of shells line up on the mantelpiece, and underneath

propped up in the hearth, is a painting of a lighthouse by my mother.

The perspective is wrong, the rocks too big; but it anchors me as I move from place

to place, its thick, white paintbeam bright against the darkness of the waves.

After too much wine, my best friend laughs and tells me I have no taste.

I smile and say it’s not a question of taste,

that the picture, the shells, seaweed garlands and the cracked, blue

vase that reminds me so much of the whorls of mussel shells and the waves

as they break on the beach, are my charms. That underneath

the job, the rent, the ability to sew on a button, there is that place

where I’m still a child, where, secretly, I miss my mother.

She used to tell me stories about her own mother

and their travels together. How she’d developed a taste

for the new on her tongue and the soles of her feet. In each new place

she’d whirl laughing through fresh rooms as I watched. Sometimes I’d find blue

stains on her pillow. They oozed from the lavender sprigs she kept underneath

as she slept, crushed in her fingers, soothing the homesickness that came in waves.

So there will always be a place for you here, Mother, wherever here

happens to be. Your lavender talisman and my wild waves have the same taste,

the sweet, blue tang of home that stays with us, pulsing, underneath it all.

The Shape of Trees

Let me climb the crag, see the

land open wide, hear the hum of

distant motorcycles, caws of

worm-hunting gulls far from sandy shores

and feel memories of lava flow, interrupted

There on rocks I will knot words

to landscape, bring side by side images of

open palms of emerald fields held by

blackened fingers of winter beeches

But the distant shape of trees resists

description for each twig belongs only to itself

and not to me; I cannot name the

fleeting dance of light beneath the clouds

the final flame of amber leaves

crowning the sycamores

Not in words but rhythm, then;

the rise and swell of breath

the thud of footsteps hitting frosted mud

only in this syncopated heartbeat lies the

thing that ties me to the shape of trees 

Mother

​

She climbs the pine tree in search of her mother.

Her fingers sticky with sap. If she doesn’t find her

when she reaches the top, perhaps her mother

will spot her up there. Perhaps not. I was her age

when I got lost in the woods behind my house.

I walked in circles, the same three birds soaring

over the same trees. My child brain couldn’t understand

how every path had grown green with wild ferns.

I cut them down with a stick and found my way home.

She fell from a broken branch and broke her elbow.

If she hadn’t fallen, she’d be climbing still.

Using the sticky branches to build a bridge to the sky.

Searching for the gateless gate that holds her mother

in the endless blue that connects us all.