The day faded, a pinkish smear that slowly turned to an ocean
Churning blue-black. Clouds as grey ghost ships rode the swell
Tipping out their pale water in pails over the night.

Window eyes, either wide open or with lids closed
Were blinking on and off - the winking lights of high rise
Towers. Beneath these stories, another one runs along...

“I run on the oil-slicks that have become city streets
But what I see, is the ripe apple-green grass of a garden
Tears of dew cling to its tips, they are flicked into the summer

By the bristles of a thick paintbrush. A tin of white paint creates a line
Not quite straight, but straight enough for my son. A little football pitch
Takes its drunken shape - all off-kilter and tilting.

Fingers tie the net’s rigging to old goal posts, and I
Behold my father: the fisherman. We spent seasons wading waist deep
In charcoal dark waves that carved coves into the cold South-Irish coast.

My father stood unmoved in mist. Amidst the deep sonorous songs
Of the wind and the rhythmic whip of the fishing lines that cracked
As they snapped back and forth in the night.

Dawn brought its orange glow and in its warmth we hauled the fish,
Glistening wet and silver over shoulders. No words the whole night.

I still see his ghost roam those shores, a fisherman’s voice

Still echoes over cold stones rolling in the surf. His sole lonesome soul
Blowing in the breeze... The city still rushes past unseen
As thoughts peel back to the dream of the green garden’s scenes.

I tied the net, then fell back to see it through my child’s eyes
My boy, whose head bled questions in streams of thought...
Mostly about Dinosaurs. For him, I planted creased corner flags

Made from pale pillowcases that billowed like sails
And with a willow’s grace, when the silk was laced by the wind
I later learned from my son, that I had made him a day to build all days upon.

An amber sun burned and dipped to embers behind the fields.
We kicked a flat crumpled ball, as he made up player’s names
And would become them all, half-cartwheeling when he scored.

When night wrapped her black blanket around us, and he had won
Because he never lost well, we shook hands and time span out
Of control - lifting us forward four years and our muddy forms fall

Into the departure hall of an airport. I bought him cheap books
From its faceless, bored stores consumed in the smell of perfume samples.
He would have read them by the time I left

In planes ,whose bellies were bloated with businessman; being
Hauled from homes and the families within them. He watched
From blue viewing galleries whose chairs in sad church pews

Had the quiet tragedy of hospital waiting rooms
On Sunday afternoons. As I flew, our distance grew
His laughter soon became a distant blur in another world.

This flight was a passage of unravelling time,
Traveling nine years to the past. He is sat, being pushed
On a rusty yellow swing in an empty playground,

It creaked in the stillness of morning
While inside, his grandmother has just died.
He can’t see her, and he keeps asking me why.

I look into those eyes, and they grow wider,
Fiery as Catherine Wheels, they spin to become portals,
Veiled by tears, through which I climb to a future time

Fast-forward twelve years.


I see the whites
Of his eyes in the coal-black
Twilight. They flinch under a fist
That finds its way through a web of wrongs
And breaks into his skin. Against, or maybe with, a base instinct
I do it again. A viscous mix, thick with tears and clots of blood-red blots,
Jots vicious patterns onto my hand.
If I read them, I would read the warnings
Of what I’d become as a man.
Yet I wipe them. I wash them... and then I dry them.
By his side, his mother is crying,
and his eyes grow wide, he is still too young to protect her
And he keeps asking why. Closing the door to murmurs of prayers, I run from their life, and flee down the stairs.