Poetry

Poems for a Family

---

Family

All the pieces in a puzzle
Separate though they may appear
Come together in symmetry to form a whole
A family, a people, a world
Water without land could never be an ocean
I without you am alone

At night when silence surrounds me
And sleep is held at bay
By thoughts that won’t be stilled
I hunger in my hungry heart
For my pieces
Scattered now
Babies, children, people
My boys, my girl
Seeds that have flowered
Tested their wings and flown to where they would

I crave within me a deep craving
For an us
A family
That times turning tide has dispatched
Like dandelion spawn on the late spring breeze
The bonds not broken, merely stretched
And I not alone merely completed
For now I know
All that can ever come between us is space

The distance that separates us
Spanned easily by the typhoon of love
That swirls from a father’s heart
And soars across the universe
To them, where ever they may be

---

I Had A Jigsaw Puzzle

I had a jigsaw puzzle once
My child gave it to me for Christmas
Fifteen hundred pieces
It was daunting
So daunting I never opened the box
It lay there
Out of sight, out of mind, forgotten
It found it’s way to the attic

Some ten years later while hiding Santa’s horde I came across it
I thought, that’s something I can do
So I took it down, finally opened the box
And took over the pool table

It was still daunting
So daunting it blinded me
Even the easy part was hard
But I persisted
Got a little passing help now and then
And finally the perimeter was finished

All those pieces
No shape no form
No line, no reason
Blank
I was blank
I wanted to quit, to run
To consign it back to it’s resting place
To hide it away again, were it wouldn’t bother me
So I could get on with doing nothing
But I pushed on (persevered)
A piece here a piece there
Mostly by chance
Divine intervention
This is impossible
But the impossible was happening
I was standing tough
And starting to see form
Starting to recognize
Starting to believe
It was coming together
Not easy but easy
Easy to go at
A chore, a gift, a blessing
A stupid puzzle
But that’s life

The gift from that long forgotten Christmas
Probably wasn’t the puzzle at all
But the knowing that the answer to any problem, quest or goal
Is to start
Piece by piece, day by day, till it’s done

How many dreams lie waiting
Lost or forgotten in an attic
Because they seemed to daunting to start
To pursue
Because one piece at a time seemed to be a dull chore
Because one day at a time would take forever
Well forever waits
Dreams wait
Life waits
Just for you
To start

---

It was Only After He had Died

It was only after he had died
That I felt something of my father’s pain
In losing his mother so young

Sitting in a mall sipping coffee
The Sunday morning shoppers mingling with my memories
Their eyes filled with what they hoped to gain
Mine only by what I had lost

The enchanted spell that renders the lonely invisible in a crowd
Blessed my emptiness
No one saw the tear in my eye or the lump in my throat
As my thoughts flashed from my father
To my own ten year old boy
At home in Ireland now
And me here in Boston lost to him

I remember I asked him once
Do you ever think of her
His eyes betraying his cover flooding with emotion
Dropped to the grimy blanket that covered him
“Of course I do” he muttered impatiently
As if amazed at the stupidity of my question
“Every day”

The ten year old was eighty-four that day
A lost little boy in an old mans body
Cut by life’s cruelest blade
A wound that lasts a lifetime

All those years being nurtured by a memory
Forms the deepest scar

---

Memories of an Irish Autumn

It’s raining this morning
Boston is crying a river for a summer that was
The deluge drawing me deep into my depths
Memories fall in tune with the prattle of the rain
Emotions swell banks burst
And my yesterdays in full flood pervade me
Those long ago days, forgotten but never lost
Gush from the shadow lands
To dance on my empty pavements

I’d love to drive to mothers for a coffee and a chat
There’s so much I want to tell her
How the kids have grown
My crazy dreams
But most of all I just want to hear her say it’s ok
Most of all I want her eyes to look at me
In that way she had of beaming awe into my soul
Settling, comforting, reassuring
In her eyes I always was what I still doubt I will ever be

Years and tears may mold mountains
But somewhere lost inside the boy remains
Still uncertain
Still groping in the darkness for proof

This September morning as the rain buckets
I’m reliving visions of an Irish autumn
When we had nothing and I was king
Because my mother’s eyes said I was
We lived in a condemned tenement
Two rooms on the top floor
No electricity, no plumbing
But me, I had everything a boy king could ever want
I had her

---

My Mother Hated the Wind

My mother hated the wind
It was a thief
It stole the slates from our roof
And the pounds from her purse

That little house is still there
Slates intact
And the wind howls now as I write
Blowing yesterdays back

Her face anguished from a sleepless night
Did you hear that last night
I thought we’d be killed in our beds
I’m twisted

And me, I never heard a sound
Safe
Comforted in the womb she made of our world
I slept soundly through the storm

She’s gone now it’s my turn to watch at night
Over dreamers as they grow
I sow my seed and bear the harvest alone
No mother to run to with my hurts

The wind howls again this morning
Blowing back the veil from across years
Memories come clear now, a woman, a mother
And a boy who was her son

Both gone now
Lost to time and it’s passing
Just me, the memory collector
Viewing my collection

---

My Father Died in November Time

My father died in November time
When Ireland lies as though stillborn
Wrapped in a shroud of fog and frost
Frigid days, blustery
Driving icy rain into you, through you

His ancient worn skin felt like November to my touch
Lying to attention, white habit, razor and beads
A deep-sea docker, a drinker, a man’s man
A ten year old who lost his mother
A husband, a brother, a father

Looking on his dead face told nothing of the man
The life, eighty-nine days short of ninety
Where do you go to when you die
The essence, the vitality that infects flesh
The puppeteer, what of the puppeteer

And that same flesh, dead without him, rotting
Sarcophagus to a doomed cancer
Executioner now condemned
Interred in icy barren soil, waiting, dying
Dolph I guess, had the last laugh

---

There are No Old People Left to Die

There are no old people left to die
Now it is my turn to man the front lines
And face the sword the reaper wields

Funny but only yesterday I was a boy
Walking in wonder by my mothers side
Through jeweled streets that promised dreams
And swelled a boys breast to bursting

Though ticking time and turning tide
Like the eight o clock train
Hold no truck with stragglers
And dreamers who dream to long
Awake to find their dream has gone
Faded like the summers rose in winters grasp
Bloom and fragrance now angry thorn on empty stem

Wasted promise is the angriest thorn
Wedged deeply in the sorry soul
Whose ship has sailed on times high tide
To paradise without them
Freezing stillborn tomorrows in the pit of heavy stomachs

From deserted quaysides remorse and the old dreamer
Stare with heavy hearts into the vacant horizon
Recounting tall tales and could have beens
The old man throws a knowing smile across the years to a boy
Whose soul soared on jeweled streets all those yesterdays ago
Those were the days he murmurs defiantly at the emptiness
Pulling his coat tight against the cutting wind
Yes those were the days he mumbles to himself as he heads home alone

Truth be told the boy never leaves
He waits always
For the man to know that life is for living
There’s always a dream in the heart of a dreamer
For dreaming is the dance of life
All gain ever stands to achieve
Is the pain of loss

---

Thomas’s Locket

My mother wore a silver locket
Pinned to her at her breast

It was for Thomas
Her baby boy
Who she said was too beautiful to live

Strangers stopped her in the street to look at him
He glowed
A light shone from him
He was her darling
Their souls entwined

All she had left of him was a lock of hair
Wrapped in cellophane in a locket
Held as close to her heavy heart
As flesh could bear it tread

Years later when she spoke to me of him
The tides of a relentless sorrow surged in anger
The grief of a mother robbed etched in her for eternity
It marked her for who she was
A living sorrow was her calling

---

We had a Sycamore Tree

We had a sycamore tree in our back garden
Only because a seed fell there and rooted
And my mother’s good heart let it be
Even though it swallowed her precious brown earth

That sycamore was doomed to runt hood
Because it cast its lot on our postage stamp
Its destiny like that of all mortal things
Rooted in choice, decided by chance

It hid the cat that chased the birds
That ate the slugs that ate my mothers prized lettuce
Its dazzling summer attire stole the sun
In autumn its castoffs clogged the drain

There was little in the deal for my mother
But still she love that bush of a tree
It made a rangy country field of her dot of earth
Hemmed in on all sides by concrete and cement

Its presence somehow filled her city life
With fantasies of long gone childhood days
Of streams and geese, cows and foxes
Holding court beneath a giant of a sycamore tree

---

We Were a Whole Family

We were a whole family
I didn’t say happy
Did I

Mother and father
Allied in catholic gridlock
Coming together to make babies and heartaches

Boys and girls, fruit of alcohol and duty
Many more than the three we became
Death was fond of my mother’s children

Cats and dogs
A procession of dogs that mostly stayed and cats that mostly didn’t
Each in it’s own way appearing to be as normal as the rest of us

The only imbalance in the symphony being me
The misplayed note that causes eyes to lift
The lost chord spotlighted in the glare of two melodies
The odd boy out
The odd ball in the middle
The oddball period

Sometimes as I look at my so very capable sisters
Living out their so very normal lives
I wonder did I take this imbalance thing to far
Like to the here and now fifty-one years old to far
Life would be so easy if you could be normal too
The incessant echo of it haunts my hungry hours
Oh for my stupid head to go away
To shut up and leave me alone

I’ve judged myself into a corner
And sentenced myself to mediocrity
Why can’t I be happy to be me
The dazzle in the middle of two perfectly mundane jewels
The different in the centre of a perfectly dull world
Perhaps I’m perfect and the world is odd
Perhaps but who’s going to give the world the bad news