REVISITING NO. 31 O'HIGGINS ROAD,
CURRAGH CAMP, CO. KILDARE

Time, that great
wind blew

away all the windows
doors and walls

of the home where
I had learnt to read

until now no house
exists at all.

Only the empty space
that a bird flies through.

I keep the roof
over my head

just to spite time
the one I drew with crayon

it still persists
in the child's mind.

My short-sighted dyslexic eye
can still see such things

a herd of brontosauri
moving from sentence to sentence

across a wilderness
of pages.

My finger tracing the sound
of a name

R.M. Ballantyne
my mouth trying to do the same.

Time too has taken
away the boy

and by some strange alchemy
made me an old man.

But the child's mind
laughs at this trick

the mere aging
of flesh.

The child that
cannot die.

The house that doesn't exist
except for my crayoned purple roof

and a name I still like
to sound.

"Come words!" I command them
as they gather me

hold me like flowers
held in a hand.

The herd of brontosauri
moving now from

one page
to the next.