The Day Is a Poem
after Robinson Jeffers
Rain on the window and thick cloud
over the mountains. Gulls dive blackbacked
at fish in mud.
On the radio they’re making the long hard choice
about emigrating
and a girl is coy about the Leaving Cert.
The estuary fills and unfills, brown sand
morphed to tempered-metal with the tides.
Buttercups and daisies bow in the wind.
Returning from Bonners, the slodge
of a black pint swilling—a cormorant
goes like the clappers
as the last plane lands at Tra Nan Strand.
Two pipistrelles whirligig
in the half-light of Braade Cottage.
Yes, the day is a poem: but too much
like one of McKimm’s, full of landscape and local news
and finishing none the wiser.