Excerpts
In Glasnevin Cemetery
The ground is heavy clay and the heavy spade a live thing in my grip as I cut the ground. Pale sky, pale rushing clouds, a sister’s hands sifting your father’s ashes on your mother’s grave. Your sisters stand and watch, their lovely daughters gathered in close as this one last time you gift …
Hy-Brazil
The island glitters in the middle of the ocean, an arcane city built on a living form submerged at the deepest part of the Atlantic, a green star flickering, only to vanish and reappear somewhere else. I have seen its other side —the dark side. It moves along the ocean bed, occasionally coming up …
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 …