Moth Myth, and: Cuckoo Spit, and: A Magpie, and: High Summer at the Seafront at Portrush

Moth Myth

He stole it from the sand bucket
his older brother kept them in:
the largest hawkmoth caterpillar,
a brown, furry thing that jiggled
between his forefinger and thumb.
Obese from feeds of willowherb,
bedstraw, fuchsia, bogbean,
it was ready to cleave to a branch
or leaf and secrete a loose cocoon.
He put it in his mouth, casually
chewed, tasted chlorophyll and flower
off its viscous, hirsute flesh.
Inside his white potbelly it made
chrysalis, within which cells
divided, shifted mass, made something
new: an in-between creature
that overwintered on his stomach wall,
slumbered until late April
when olive wings suffused with pink
poked through the swollen sack, emerged
followed by antennae, thorax,
an abdomen still rough and plump-
sole remnant of that former self,
khaki markings now mottling it.
A moth full-grown, it shivered
and flew up toward his mouth,
broke into the light, the yellow room
where his agile mother hand-trapped it,
brought it still living to his lips,
made him mouth in and swallow it
for fear that it would carry off his soul.

Cuckoo Spit

Mullkerrins was older, always on the cod,
swearing to God that bats drank blood from cows,
that dog piss could cure warts. Behind his house,
amongst the ferns and sedge, the sally rods
his mother kept to tan his hide, there stood
a dry stone shed where that year's spuds were stored.
Inside, Kerr's Pinks fingered their white shoots towards
the light that skulked beneath the door. We would
steal in there when the coast was clear to look
through his Uncle Colm's stash of dirty books.
Mullkerrins would name the parts, fanny and dick,
and, once, undid his pants to do a trick
of hand movements and moans that made him split
and bleed something pure white, like cuckoo spit.

A Magpie

I.

Ore's glint in granite drew your kin,
before the Bronze Age dawned, to peck
at light in stones that would not budge
'til man began to mine and forge
the loot that lines your nest's mud-dome:
the gold cufflinks and silver coins
your eyes spied dropped under wash-lines;
the brass buttons and scraps of foil
you scavenged, pulled from rubbish piles;
and every other sparkling thing
mentioned in the psalm you brought
last Sunday to my window sill,
where eyes closed Sean nós style, full-lunged,
you opened throat in praise of shine.

II.

Often down rough, potholed backroads,
I've watched you pick through the remains
of tire-tracked rabbits and rats,
headbutt driving your beak through pelts
for blood's salt slick, its thick red slop-
the same jackhammer jab and cut
by which you plan to crack Earth's shell
and root out God, get your own back
for the time, enraged by your blather,
he plucked five feathers from your tail,
left you the bitter black-white bird
who loiters on high wires round here,
the infrequent flyer whose smirk and stare
says know your future by my number...

High Summer at the Seafront at Portrush

The cut of them! Granda in three-piece suit,
Granny in flowery frock and matching hat,
as, slightly flushed, they pose for Uncle Pat,
who's popped the lens cover, begun to shoot,
in Cine Kodak Eight, in black and white,
"High Summer at the Seafront at Portrush."

Mild waves work the background, their drag and push
muffled under the silent film's tick. A kite
jerks left, then right, above a boy in trunks
whose back and forth drifts in and out of shot.
While to the front, they're there in the same spot
they were two minutes back: Granda all hunched,

Granny's face strained, her smile about to break,
both of them waiting for some click or clack
to say that's it, day noted, now relax,
unhat your head, roll up those trousers...