Through gaps in the trees I can see Dublin's pier
The Poolbeg stacks are surprisingly clear
Striped and remote, their billowing clouds
are a silvery choke

Here where the roads aren't routes that I know
They are comforting so and offer some bearing
I am followed on high by that pairing

Towers over buildings, towers over pines
Those two yonder towers are the most
on my mind

Here where the leaves are dramatically red,
quietly falling and littering bends
Here where the birches are a heavenly white,
those two yonder towers are the most on my mind

No rest till I'm dwarfed by those towering twins
No rest till I'm flush with the deafening drink
There a horizon and sparingly strewn,
with buoys and boats; sitting strange in the gloom

Far beyond the gable ends of dark suburban streets
Riding past the furthest flats where paths give way to fields

Where giant cranes with groaning frames are elevators into space
Looming over dark estates, unoccupied and halfway built
A regiment of vacant digs

Set out just like theatre props; a sort of play not yet begun
The porches laid with welcome rugs for when the future tenants come

And when they take up residence and get their keys and pay their rent
They'll surely never think of me as I have thought of them
The countless nights I've seen to spend, exploring every lamplit bend

Or how I'd trekked those distant places, before they'd laid the first foundations
Beyond the reach of tired feet, where fauns or fairies surely meet

The dark and curing plains are real and stretch for starry miles around
The rustle and din of windblown things, the rush of moonlit clouds

And soon from now when strangers come and pick the perfect house to live
And make it theirs and settle in and pick a room to put the crib
I'll stop the squeak of spinning wheels upon some distant mound or cliff
And moving closer to the lip; Dublin twinkles past the tip

Oh winter how soon you will leave me
How soon you'll bereave me
And though I'll remember your seasonal sights,
your evergreens and birches converging for miles
These things are not nearly enough
I want us to touch

To fashion you into some tangible thing
Some newlywed's ring, attached to a finger
That I may look down and remember you – winter

While somewhere yule-ash is being spread in the fields
That the old gods might hasten their yields
Or kept beneath pillows to silence a storm
I will lie beneath virgo, a lover forlorn

My hands over handles and the studded upholstery
Reflective and cold as the strangers come close to me

Swaying like passengers stood on a boat
I'm fleetingly heartened by the accents I know

Picking them out of the bullying crowds
We're hurrying past unfamiliar towns

The streetcorners, bridges and shops that they know
Serenely suffused by a summery glow

The picturesque places they lazily go,
like postcards or paintings delivered back home

I'm rolling on by their entire other lives
Their lot on my mind and to them unbeknownst

Like a rousing of wind which as suddenly goes
For a moment we had almost been close

A mother of two and her children in tow
The three of them dressed for the perishing cold
An afternoon trip!

Her children never walk, but they run and they skip!
And I in their midst - the opposite sides of a
red-painted bridge

Coffee alone is a moment of mine,
An oval mug served by a girl with a smile
Dark coloured drips coming down at the sides..
crashing through time, like gas giants catching the light

And raging outside is the storm in it's tracks
Tall windows spare us the blustery flak
Moored for a moment we are comfortably sat
Our ghostly reflections are a film upon glass

The din of winter is a window away
I've come here to stay at my Grandmother's
The bedroom aglow in her yellows and reds
The lamp by the bed

Beckoned by hands and a magical timbre
I'm starting towards her in answer,
recalling her manner
Her habits preserved as in amber

Sat by her side and embracing her then
I'm suddenly a child again,
her eighty-two years to my ten