IS TUSA...MO THEACH RÚNDA BEAG
(You Are...My Little Secret House)

my house
a hedge
on my uncle's farm

that only existed
in summer
holiday land

In terms of time
it is the year
called 1963

but that is neither
here nor there
for this is the timeless time

of a small boy who
wishes to be
invisible

found when falling
from a tree
into a fairy tale

hedge of many
years standing
thick and tangled with time

door
?
there is no door

one has
to beat
one's way in

the only door is
pain
and determination

endure the sting
of nettle
the scratch of briar

crying is
the only thing
not allowed

burrs clinging
to curls
and geansaí

transforming you
into a wild
creature

dock leaves stand near by
to take the sting
out of things

the hedge
closing
behind you

but once inside
it blossoms out into
a makeshift  palace

that only
a child could
cherish

a hedgehog
keeps
house

the other
occupants
various creepy crawlies

sunlight now
and then
comes to visit

sometimes
the rain
drops in

gossiping in
drips
and drabs

a roof of bird song
and green
sunlight

a wall of pig squeals
and chicken clucks
moos and barkings

I a creature
amongst
other creatures

sharing this
the same
moment

grateful
I am
for their acceptance

oh I must go. . .
a butterfly
needs to talk to me

LÁ FHÉILE BRIDE - SAINT BRIGID'S DAY

( for Noreen )

even Brigid's statue
protects the little birds
nestling behind her

and as a little garsún
wasn't it to the birds
I would pray

believing that Brigid
was releasing them
to Spring skies

*

St. Brigid's Garrison Church in the Curragh Camp where I was born...this statue was woven into the fabric of my childhood. Birds used to nest behind her wooden cloak. Her cross is the only cross I can bear and was a staple of every Irish home when my childhood was in full bloom. Great story of her going to ask the King for a bit of land to build a convent on and he laughed and said you can have as much as your cloak can cover. So being the good saint she was....she spread her cloak and it covered miles and miles. Never mess with a saint!

Of course it is also the beginning of Imbolc (pronounced 'im'olk')that good old Pagan festival if you are that way inclined.

An Irish word that was originally thought to mean 'in the belly' although many people translate it as 'ewe's milk' (oi-melc)all associated with the pregnancy of ewe and the giving of milk. The Curragh Plains are of course festooned with many many sheep so that made it all the more real for us.

It is a festival based on seasonal changes associated with the onset of lambing and the blooming of the Blackthorn.

She is the Goddess of among other things....those curious creatures we call....poets.

Indeed wasn't auld Jemmy de Joist born the very next day in the wake of her feast day and the days beginning to lengthend.

An old proverb from Scotland tells us....
Thig an nathair as an toll
Là donn Brìde,
Ged robh trì troighean dhen t-sneachd
Air leac an làir.

The serpent will come from the hole
On the brown Day of Bríde,
Though there should be three feet of snow
On the flat surface of the ground.

Spring has indeed been sprung from the depths of winter.

The Statue of St. Brigid & Children can be seen over the main entrance. The statue is eight feet in height and was carved in teak by the late Oisin Kelly who is best known for his The Children of Lir (1964) in the Garden of Remembrance,, Jim Larkin (1977) O'Connell Street and his Chariot of Life (1982) at the Irish Life Center.

And didn't auld Seamus give him a mention in his second "Glanmore Sonnet."

"'These things are not secrets but mysteries',
Oisin Kelly told me years ago
In Belfast, hankering after stone
That connived with the chisel, as if the grain
Remembered what the mallet tapped to know."

So from the wee buachaill I once was I could join the dots from statue to statue and all the way into a Heaney sonnet Brigid lore of yore.

SCHRODINGER'S DOG

Unlike
Schrödinger's cat

Schrödinger's dog

was always
there

under his feet

hungry for
...his Master's voice...a pat...the sound of his step...

The cat
(like anybody's cat)

couldn't give
a toss

(but that was neither
here nor there) .

It's hard to tell

if it's alive or if
it ain't.

It's one
lazzzzzzy cat.

He's never there
(when you want him to be)

and always there
(when you don't want him to be.)

Quark the cat
was just one big paradox.

The dog
was old and faithful

always
in the box

asleep or gnawing
a bone in thought.

The cat couldn't care
less

a source
of constant

anxiety

about its
whereabouts

and the state
of its health.

Being
neither

here nor
there

or somewhere
else entirely

as if it lived
in a parallel universe.

Lived in a world
of its own.

Thus the theory of
Schrödinger's Cat

proved
(beyond doubt)

that although
cats are nice an' all dat

dogs
are a scientist's

best friend.

*

In 1935, Schrödinger published an essay describing the conceptual problems in quantum mechanics. A brief paragraph in this essay described the cat paradox:

One can even set up quite ridiculous cases. A cat is penned up in a steel chamber, along with the following diabolical device (which must be secured against direct interference by the cat) : in a Geiger counter there is a tiny bit of radioactive substance, so small that perhaps in the course of one hour one of the atoms decays, but also, with equal probability, perhaps none; if it happens, the counter tube discharges and through a relay releases a hammer which shatters a small flask of hydrocyanic acid. If one has left this entire system to itself for an hour, one would say that the cat still lives if meanwhile no atom has decayed. The first atomic decay would have poisoned it. The Psi function for the entire system would express this by having in it the living and the dead cat (pardon the expression) mixed or smeared out in equal parts.[

*

There was a leak in my cistern in the brain stem. I didn't like to play dice with my universe so I called a quantum mechanic in. I asked him if it was bad. He said: Well, it is or it isn't...depending on how you look at it.. It's good for me...bad for you! '

'Now, about that cat? '

'Not that old chestnut....the cat is over 70 now...just fix the cistern will ya! I had the cat poisoned...so that's that! '

'Ohhhhh! '

'Anyway...it was a hypothetical cat! '

'Ya mean it wasn't real? '

'Oh...what is real?

He seemed considerably saddened by this and left without charging for the cistern.
I hate when after all this time Animal Rights activists disguise themselves as plumbers in order to rescue the ****** cat that is neither alive or dead.

Next time it leaks...I'll call a vet.

MEETING MY FATHER AFTER HIS DEATH

Time is a jigsaw
piece
from another

puzzle
other than
this one

that can never ever
fit
some even missing

one a Jackson Pollack
the other another
Jackson Pollack

Death laughs
at my efforts
Time shrinks to a nothing

my father
has evaporated
from this photo

here are his clothes
empty
without him

here
an harmonica
growing dust

I snip bits off of different pieces
in order to make them
fit by force if necessary

and slowly an imperfect
picture forms
made of memories

made of times
held together only
by the glue of love

WRITING MY BROTHER

I create a world
of words for you
to believe in

see I give you
verbs
you walk...you talk

I surround you with
the necessary nouns
sustain you with

adverbs and adjectives
split
an infinitive

I adjust the past
make it last
longer than

a future could be
change my mind
change time

tinker
with the
what-could-be

here I have us
a cloud of words
emanating from

our Christmas faces
making angels
the newest snow

on the tip of our tongues
on the tip of our tongues
or noses

awed by an Aurora Borellis
my breath
mingled with yours

a star glows
trapped
in a window pane

as if it only
shivers there
a prisoner of itself

now I change
the weather
see...it's summer

autumn whatever
I want it
to be

I reach for another
the next word
another page and

another page
until my pen
runs out of words

leaves you alone
upon a page
the blankness
terrifying

"Brother
mine
...Brian!"

"Shhh. . !"
Death admonishes
". . .enough!"

as I try to
keep you
alive for ever

*

I wrote this on the eve of the New Year....4,000 miles from anywhere in the middle of the Atlantic...emotionally it was like that too.

JIKANWA TOMARU( TIME IS STOPPED)


The dead were talking to me
in black and white.

Complained all the colour
had gone out of their voice.

Complained they lived their lives
like they were a movie.

The illusion of living
rather than the thing itself.

You know...that thing
"cinema is truth

24 frames
per second."

We call it
"Waiting for Godard" syndrome.

"Oh our "story has a beginning
middle and an end but. . .

. . .not necessarily
in that order."

Sometimes it slows to
just a still or

Godard help us
only a publicity photograph.

We look at your living
envious of your movement.

Your ability to
change and be

something then
something new again.

We can remember
doing that without thinking.

God it's hard.
So hard to see you

take it all
for granted.

What we would give
just to be aware

of a leaf
trembling on a tree.

Or a bird taking flight
into a summer.

Or see a stone
skim across water.

World has become
tiny as a tittle

on an i or
a j

or how was it the Bible put it
". . .till heaven and earth pass. . ."

Earth time is so
brief.

Blink and you
will miss it.

We thirst for even one
of your seconds

Hunger for the time
you so nonchalantly throw away.

Here....there
is...no time.

"JIKANWA TOMARU!"
"JIKANWA TOMARU!"
"JIKANWA TOMARU!"

"Time is stopped!
Time is stopped!
Time is stopped!"

They kept repeating
...in Japanese."". . .

TWO ETERNITIES AND AN INFINITY

The doc gave me
the once over.

"Well...what is it
doc...tell me!"

"Now...don't quote me but
to quote Mr. Eliot

you got
"Some minor problems of the soul."

"What'ya mean minor
for crying out loud.!"

I know this is
a personal question but

how long exactly have you been
eh...dead?"

"They tell me only an hour or so
...no more I...still not use to it!"

"Well you see as far as I can see
you are leaking time

and only your will to live is
keeping you...keeping on."

I was thinking of asking
for a second opinion.

"You are finding it hard to believe
...you are dead

despite all the obvious signs
and the facts."

He paused
scribbled indecipherably on a pad.

"But it's not the physical
aspect I am worried about."

He paused again.
I drank in the silence.

"It's the state of your soul
good God man

you can't go to your maker
in such a state."

I opened my mouth
but the doc told me to close it.

"No...you can't
ask not to be born!"

He placed his fingertips
together in a typical doctor gesture.

"But we can now give you
a replacement soul

that once belonged
to a second to none nun.

Life's cheap I thought but
a soul ain't.

"What in Heaven's name
will it cost!"

"The usual..." he chuckled gleefully
"Two eternities and an infinity."