Filíocht Nua: New Poetry Jean O’Brien Snow Ciphers Ice crystals growing on threadbare trees are strange fruits of rime. Cold sun brings beauty to a cruel landscape, white has homogenised road and fields. Only the steaming black or brown coats of horses stand out in relief against a featureless backdrop. Lambs hurtle like tossed snowballs their mothers lost in the need to make milk. Birds rustle and break from every hedgerow. I gingerly inch past, robins, finches, blackbirds—even that tiny troglodyte the wren, all fluffed feathers, like dust-devils bowling along. Mostly we stay cooped up, locked in, braving the chill only to chip away at frozen coal, its burnished black stark against the almost monotonous white. Fog and grey skies menace and hang heavy, strange footprints ripen in the dark. [End Page 43] Scandinavian Dream The dead visit me in dreams as I lapse between consciousness and sleep, in that anteroom where dreams are hung waiting to be tried on. Lately my father has come to me, alive and well it seems after all. He now lives near some Scandinavian forest, in a bright log cabin. I see bark peel from the burnished wood and trees in the middle distance, a small clearing like a yard outside the door with honeysuckle growing under the eaves. I could describe this place enough to go there. The air here is light and suffused with motes that could be fireflies waiting for the dark to illuminate them. My father does not speak to me, (though he is sentient, I know) nor seem to notice I am here. He looks my way but his gaze goes through me. He rests on an upholstered chair. When he leans forward I see orange birds of paradise embroidered on the upright. The pattern looks out of place here where everything is pared down and uncomplicated. Even if he no longer knows me, I am glad I have seen him, and that he is content. Death suits him in some way. At daybreak my husband touches me. I leave the woods and wake to the summer cotton counterpane on our bed, the radio murmuring some unwelcome news. I fix my sleep-filled gaze on a trapped butterfly tapping its Morse unanswered on the window pane. [End Page 44] Out of His Element If he could fly he would go now to his spawning pool. Instead he lies drowning in air, his glistering scales dulling down. His eyes grow cold and flat clouding over, the leap and struggle ended. One leap too far and he landed on earth stranded on grass, the blue of sky fixed in him. He dreams of flashing through clear water, casting his sheen and shadow onto stones on the river bed. His gills heaving now as he draws air, lungs gulping for water. Web A single magpie flies sorrowfully by his black and white feathers intersecting with the colours of a fading rainbow. We see the spider and his web and he sees us as he sits an all-seeing eye at the centre of a world that radiates ’round him. His silk stretches from tree trunk to tall purple Allium, whose giant head nods in the breeze. I work around it tenderly, sensing its almost invisible presence, like a snagging doubt at the edge of consciousness, as I dig and plant, footing in the promise of summer blooms. The joyful second magpie joins its mate, their plumage stark in gathered evening light. Rain clears and small droplets snared in the web make it twinkle like evening star. I gather up my spade and hoe and move indoors. [End Page 45] Barefoot The long grass is swaying like the roll and swell of sea, plunging and windblown and watery green. Beached on a shelf a roller conch shell, pearly white, tinged with pink, an ear trumpet thumping out sounds of waves and the lap of water. I feel we are harvesting the sea. The end of the earth is marked by a child dragging a stick through shale at the place where it is swallowed by water. Looking out I see the dividing line between liquid blue and air blue...
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Dec 1, 2011
S.K Mishra + 6
Open Access