Filíocht Nua: New Poetry

The Mining Road

Where moss is gold in the copper poolsmy mother dreams her mother on the road,sitting up ahead, among whistled reeds

and ocean steaming rocks. Up and outof her hospital bed, her wound stitchedand silvering beneath her night-clothes.

Quietly, she slips her cardigan off and startsto unravel it, both hands working and steadyuntil she has teased it apart completely.

And begins again. Famine-road, mine-road,moss stitch; like grass swallowed down a shaftthe wool quivers up again towards her lap,

her eyes cast down, needles tapping out the work,its strangeness, until it heals her, the oldmovements long clenched and deep in her hands.

I dream them now together in mountain lightleading each other where the road winds down,and carries on, past where they thought it would end.

A Parcel

Sometimes after the scatter of envelopeshe would haul a parcel from the post-vanand carry it inside for my mother

while we stood by, guessing at its greasedand sooty underside, our gazes hurriedand raised to where he left it on the table.

It smelled of heat and a stretch-marked pullwhere the brown paper had worn outagainst the cardboard, its sides broadening

as we picked and ferreted, sounding outthe markered names and kept distancesuntil the taped down edges began to give.

*

Oakside, Seventy-seven, Long Island.The stamps my mother cut were savedin a jam-jar while we emptied out the box

setting the clothes in piles along the floor,full of chatter and babbling to ourselvesas we began the slow pageant

back and forth in new shirts and dresses.Everything being admired and consideredwas hung across the curtain rail

until it seemed like a small processionhad returned home and gathered there,breathing staleness and open air.

*

Undulant, ocean blue,turquoise hemmed with cerise,and a round yoke neat

and pluming at the neck.A smock dress that swung outbelow my knees

swished and swepton its first outing around the fields.I imagined the shiver

of an engine still beating in the hem,traffic passing through the grasses,thunder in the clouds.

Irish Weather

for Laura

Rainwater gathered from the kitchen ceiling,the blown char and armour from saucepansspattering against the tall rim of that world.Oh yes, that could be us two, strikingclose to the sound of each word-blow;downpour of shouts into the downstairs room,where later we'd be kneeling at the window,our breath stopped like white, summer poolson the glass as we counted out minutesbetween showers. The mirror of ourselvesgleaming first, we watched the sky crack openabove nests and thunder in the gutter eaves.

            But lightning—

do you remember that summer in Italy?If we moved we might have gone up in flames,bougainvillea wavering in the valleylike us two reddened onto our chairs, the tossof your fan being the first real crackle of firein the air. So that when the rain did comeand people began to hurry past us into barsand restaurants, we sat under the domeof the quickening sky, the stoop of the windlifting tables, the whole world creakedand changed. Like once before I heardyour first shoe fall, quiet your dazzled skin.

Departures

Your skin turns blue in the river mists,when the sky is blue, but this is the liquidcome-and-go tracery of you beyond the corridor.

You stand there like the ghost of yourselftelling me things with your hands.O love, your voice trembles softly down the glass

and refuses to be still, like evenings when the riverrose in a hush of deep clearing, I followedthe patterns of your skin as they were swept away.