Back the strand
For John B Keane at 70
Back the strand I have walked
between the remnants of bagged up pups
Bright blossoms of anemone
and washed back sheep's gut
A leveret has sprung
from where my foot would tread
Hesitant past a saint tombed isle
Archipelago of the dead
Distant bells have voiced their call
consecrating the wind torn hills
Over cloud chased Coomanaspig
curlews answered shrill
This path rising to a jagged grin
where moon and earth meet sun and sky
In the long grass there to listen
amongst shell and sea song I will lie
Bone-craft
Lost at sea?
It had no mate
It's entrails gory in a spate
Dank and long. Big as any whale
Swept red up the blanchéd spit
A taut black bow. Beaching
in to a broad arch
Wavering it's grip
only where gravity
plucked it's portion of horizon
Like Gulliver first arising
bleary eyed. Surprised. It
neatly forged a Soutine sett
into the jaw sharp shingle
Perhaps lost. Concussed
Lead astray by the keeling keen
of marinized engines. Con-rods
compelling call. Chasing
Archimedes worm
- baited for destruction
Bone-craft. Harled and hauled
to a reductive station
Tried to extract succour
from the tide-dry esker
Were those open wounds. Harpoons?
Carnassial shear of swordfish
Rending aside it's giving plate
Last bellow of a languid spinnaker
Forced to furl. Framed to form
and harrow the dry stone
Invoke the Ephesian clause
Coracled by barnacles. Matelot
helped escape corruption's cell
Nor wrong witted or dragooned
Connate. Conned. Straked and corbelled
a coralline church. Shored Carnac
Elemental passage with it's being
Burren
I have harvested
enchantment
in fields of stone
Under the shrill protests
of still wild birds
Gathered shadows of dead heroes
into creels of bone
I have heard the laments
of childless women crowd
through dead forests
Traced the scrawl where bony finger's
picked out each patchwork rut and row
A bright mist shrouds
their faces. Gentle
the trickle of their tears
Remembering each flawed caress
nurturing cut flowers
Urging dormant seeds to grow
from ancient fissures
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