9.Map of Storms by Duncan McGibbon (best free e reader TXT) 📖

/> Once each town had a boat in.
How many times had he taken the trick?


4. Churchgoing: Morning.

A slow mist had covered
the moorland mountains.
Their peaks
breaking through the haze,
while the cows
still lay below.

At the church porch, tough skinned men
stood cross-armed, packed into the space,
listening to the voice, from within,
pleading devotion to the sacred heart

At the turn of the tide the glassy shrimps,
scudded to pursue the water fleas.
In the channels the dark hulksof mullet
snapped at flies on the weed-glazed surface.

The house wives shook their heads at
the news of the accident.

Bereavement not withstanding,
the rush to the door after
communion was the same.
The men in black suits
stood under the tree
in the churchyard,
while the women walked home.

Doug Callaghan stood immobile,
but erect by the side of the road,
easing his weight onto the sticks
hs gripped with a huge, but palsied hand.

He watched the grey road,
waiting for his lift.

The blue-painted bell on the church hung still
while horses played in the fields by the road.
From the rubbish dump the first wisps
of a fire had begun to drift over the car-park.

The roads were empty.

5. Late Morning, The General Store.

The palm trees and the sallies in the hedgerows
shivered and rocked under a breeze from the west.
In the churchyard, a painted stone showed
the place where the limb should be buried.

Ned Blake's store was empty of ice-cream
and washing powder that Sunday.

The Victorian terrace of old Engineers’ houses,
lorded the mainland channel.

Eamon’s body was brought in at midday
while the church rang out the angelus.

Callagham still stood by the roadside,
while the shadow-line from the barn
crept towards inert boats
and knew it was too late.

At least he could see.


6.Afternoon, the Bridge

Under the bridge, huge swathes of weed
trailed and distended in the glameous depths.

At low tide the crackle of dun-coloured wrack
at intervals across the strand.

Children found the delivery-man
asleep at the wheel in the garage driveway
unable to get off the island.

A thick almost leisurely rumble of thunder
accompanied the flapping, trailing edge
of the cloud's shadow, pointing, then covering
the littered stones of empty bothies
on the empty mountain. From the moor's
heather stains, to creep slowly across
the bay below.


7. The Mountain Road

Pat Kelly, fresh-faced, took a lift with a flick
of his quick thumb from a battered Toyota
on the otherside road,
his football boots crammed
into a torn, plastic bag.

The sun was beginning to throw an orange column
onto the estuary mud, flickering and changing
its form to the curl of the clouds

Doug Callagham stood under the shadow
of the barn, his eyes no longer watching the road

The accident had blocked the main road
during the night hours. No
traffic had been able to move
along the white roads

Fresia and hawthorn dotted the hedgerows.

The rabbits’ white brunts
were barely visible in the dusk.

The Toyota passed Doug Callaghan

“I’m going the other way.”

“Will you take me back? It’s too late now.”

Oyster-catchers and sandpipers
strutted and tapped their beaks
in the iron blue pools
in the rust - red and orange rocks


8.The Mainland

The Toyota was the first car
to get through.
It passed the stream where
the big O'Boyle mansion lay
a huge red rust stain
in the shape of a boat-hut
spread out on the rock beach
nagged the coastline.

On an outcrop. a seal was being
chased by a terrier. Its hollow bark,
echoing against the ruined walls.

On the road the cars were stopping
behind the herd coming in for milking.
The bull's thick red and white, matted hair
highlighted the farmer’s girl’s long
bare legs, as white as celandine stalks.
Her skinny form in calm control.

9.St. Brigid’s Cottages.

The summer stars were scattered in the night;
gull-smashed limpets lay on the gray beach.
The wind from the sea turned colder, tapping
the rattling wires tight to the station reach.

Doug had sat by the window,
wondering if Maire
would ever come back,
his hand trembling as he lit the white surface.
of the firelighter under the crumpled
paper bag and torn soap packet,
turf and dried fuschia
he had piled on the hearth-stone.

He added the kindling
as the fire lit up the room.

Doug remembered the night
of the great storm,
when the mackeral had sheltered in
port, their flourescent gills crowding
the water with dotted lights.

He listened as the priest’s
heavy foot crunched in the path.

He let him in with a brusque gesture

“Another grave to be dug , next to the leg.”

Why did Moira want it next to that eejit?

and the whole house empty now.


Isoline 2

Sure Tremors


Sanctuary

Naked, free and unashamed with the tree
still trembling at such brusque cropping.
Why did that dread Gardener busy
himself so much with your finding ?

Only after the mock trial, speeches sounding odd,
the fitting of prison clothes did tears
begin to roll. Sorry victims of an angry God
just looking for excuses, noting fears

Yet after the expulsion and the rise
of survival notes, the lad returned
alone and measured the bloodied tree for size:
its broken branch, the wounded Word.

Back in that garden now the hand
that will not touch Him, touches land.


Decibar

At the Heart of the Eye.
A Treatise of Light

"Da amantem et sentit quod dico."

A Treatise of Light 1.

A word is within us, awaiting entrance,
while, elsewhere, light falls on our shoulders,
We print each other bare, in thorough trance.

Once, at play in our nakedness, a glance
frosted the page. In a flash our elders
legacy was read. Become shamed lodgers,
we dug earth for our inheritance.

We touch, but never again in winter light.
Mental acts never yield sure payment
to excavate a passage from our plight.

We live, are strong in our fulfillment,
yet never risk a chill, nor feel delight
enough to change that dumb inside, our blight.


A Treatise of Light 2

Sincere, we make love better unaccomplished.
Footballers hear no praise, nor sanction
any thrill, until their goal's established,
but no sure score can rule our union.

Now you stir to prove the need I published.
Yet tactless in my storybook attention,
it is now your nothingness I taste, wished
from concrete flesh to kill abstraction.

Our joy is not an aim so finished,
nor are we bared for one to be sole champion
but, naked, breast no tape, to win no burnished
trophy save a secret say in love's convention.

Your heartbeat burns its image on my mind
and pulls me from the dream, now flame-consigned.


A Treatise of Light 3

Snow-blind to each other's features, so crushed
under low pressure troughs of touch.
Isobar of shifting sensibilities, modal, our trust
lies unstirred. We lie nearer, try to clutch

against that cold light. Whiteness tossed
on the blankets, on the bedroom floor, such
scenes from Flemish winters, evenly embossed
above the curtains. Have we lost so much?

The ceilings blind us. We are only light,
or the shimmer of waves. Its vibration
spins the hazard memory. So, white,

we freeze ourselves into a still creation.
So, cold, we pale into a fall. So, slight,
we cannot stem this flood of inner sight.


A Treasise of Light 4.

We grasp only theory, as an unknown ghost
might haunt in a house, namelessly bearing
unchronicled reference, while uncaring
tourists ignore an immaterial host.
The act forgiven, but the vision lost, we boast
of indexing oblivion to the tale we are sharing.
We hold both sides of the question, pairing
only to conjugate. We part as a contrary signpost
joined in each dream's separate place.
When we seek our ease, in sounder sleep,
eac hdefines the other in one embrace.
To our critics who claim we are a heap,
we answer with our hands that daily trace
the truth; spectres both, we're face to face.


A Treatise of Light 5

We taste for it still, blinding ourselves
from indifference to vision.
Our neighbourhood mornings, smooth on the shelves
white, close, measured with precision.
Each mute moment questions our pallid shells.
Wanting love from your gender, I make petition,
as an envious refugee, whose hope never quells.
Gaudy, sublime, I raise issues without repetition.
Yet, passerines, we needn't go South for kisses.
Winter or Summer, our season is ripe.
We study our instincts of intimate misses.
Our appetites distract us from hype.
We are at one as playing children
will never go home until they're bidden.


A Treatise of Light 6.

What the hour has left of the suddeness
of naked skins, caught in a sure tremor
of touch, is matter enough to remember.
We are tutors to things turned from dryness.

In the ash, warmth still claims its restiveness.
Look to the burns, to the blackened tear
for signs of passion. Tender soot is sear,
for temperate climes, so moist with ripeness.

What did we do, what did we have long ago
in those joyous days whose taste we still thirst?
We will take the day as once it was first.
Times antipodeans whose home is below.

Yet what the day mandates, we could once debate
and what the Lord commands, we could once create.


A Treatise of Light 7.

In the heart of the quick eye, I plead
on the strength of a casual hour.
To the iris of your knowing seed
light leads its rays of power.

Seeking, we savour all our need
as if we kissed all oblivion sour.
Finding, we lose and then succeed
and sleep, unsought in a double bower.

The beams of silent stars,
having an unfixed light
vainly complete with our scars,
in the heart of the night.

We bid on the hand of boundless space
the living risk that is our grace.


A Treatise of Light 8.

Asleep, we pass each other by, as strangers,
but, unaware, we are more proximate.
One in forgetfulness, our angers
turn from each other so insensate;
create a drought whose dust engenders
rest which death alone can imitate

our nakedness and hostage state.
Hoist on Petrarch's tumbril, while for labour
we must turn to one another, consummate.
Apart from perinatal weight, we savour
what binds us to this child not yet incarnate.
We cannot live as one, save through their saviour.
None triumphs in love without a loss,
a blossom written off under first fruit's gloss


A Treatise of Light 9.

A first light filters through flapping lace
within the window frame's fixed white.
Somewhere a bird auditions, keeping pace
yet not taken up, furls again for night.
Beside me in Summer nakedness you grace
my gravity. I claim King Winter's right
to protest your slumber, I kiss your face.