Outside the shops dressed for Christmas, movement everywhere - a confusion of coats, shoes, bags; of “don’t-you-run-away” holding hands, and here-and-there a bustling urgency pushing past gawpers and dawdlers outside the shops.
On the street beneath angels and candles strung overhead, thick traffic moving jerkily through the town by the river in that far-off valley.

The road I’m cycling on is climbing still, its steep inclines forcing from my lungs a harsh, gasping rhythm and filling my legs with aches until flattening out somewhat it brings me to the top, and here I stop, my eyes, in long slow drafts, drinking all they see.
On the moorland beside the road are sheep, tough as the grasses they chew upon and seeming to be set in this landscape as though they were outcrops of rocks left exposed by eons of erosion.
The Solstice sun paints pale greens and patches of dark browns, all spread across the rise and fall of these billowing hills, and way down there, where leafless woods cloak a curving slope, a sudden lake reflects the sky - a gleaming, flawless jewel.

There is another side.

A sun that’s low casts but half of what you see in a certain light; turn around and face that sun to see the world transformed, and so it was when now I gazed and was entranced by what I saw on that high and silent place.
I looked towards a massive shape, its details in that light no more than dimly hinted at; a lump of land dropped from the sky and spreading out like dough, or, if whimsy took my fancy, a giant lying asleep on that dark horizon.
Threadbare clouds half hid the sun whose light, escaping through some holes, shone in pearly beams, and where they fell upon the Earth there was illumination; a pool of colour, and rising from a lonely house, a smear of rising smoke - all else mystery and gloom.

These images imprinted on my mind and, I felt, enriching me, I rode towards the town.
Ahead, a crowd of crows had gathered round some dead thing in the road, their flapping flight as I approached heavy with resentment .
What, I wondered, had they found?

Had I died on that hill, and was I now reborn?

Bird

I too can fly like you, Bird,
I too can soar -
my feet here on the ground,
my body glued to earth.

But Bird, the "I" inside my head
has wings as wide as yours and
when I chose, I too, Bird,
am just as free as you.

Did you see, I wonder, where I put my heart?
Full to overflowing with my love for you?

I carried it so gently across that rocky shore
And all the way I bore it `til I reached your door.

My heart and I climbed mountains,
and watched by beasts of prey,
we stumbled through dark woods,
uncertain of our way.
I wanted you to have it; to keep it just for you.

Your smiling eyes were icy when you turned us away,
And in my confusion I put it down somewhere.

But now I cannot find it - My eyes too filled with tears.

Falling

Falling leaves slip silently through the autumn air from their autumn glories,
And in that graveyard which I passed they'll lie and fade, as do memories of the dead.

On tombs and headstones names are carved which now are long forgotten;
"John" and "Jacob, "May" and Mary" who died so long ago.

Above the graves where lie their bones and who and what they were,
fallen leaves cover the ground - gay today and stirred by breezes but not for very long -Saddened by the winter rains, then they'll be a mourning cloak for those no longer mourned.

Mr Normal

"Look at me" he said.
"I`m proud of what I am
"I'm honest - often - And if I lie, it's only because I have to.
I do it less than some I know who think they're relatively truthful.
I'm not unfaithful to my wife -
Not in any normal sense
When "normal" means
Sleeping with her friends.
There have been times, I do admit, I've been obliged to oblige
A friendly "bit of skirt" -
But always most discreetly, mind,
And with the understanding it's Strictly "entre nous" - with absolutely
No strings attached - is that understood?
I haven't stolen anything since I was a kid,
OK. Yes. When my house was broken into, I did inflate the losses;
Everyone does the same - I mean - you beat the system if you can,
Or the system will beat you.
It's what you learn at school.

"Look at me" he said. "Do I look abnormal?"

Autumn sun

That sun lying low behind the trees
And making two-dimensional monsters
Stretch across the grass of the grazing sheep;
That sun so fiercely bright I can but glance at it,
And am blinded to all the world around me when I do,
Is playing make belief - A lion that roars to cower the realm
It's now too old to rule, and soon must die -
That sun is slowly slipping into winter's wane;
He's in the evening of his year,
And lays Autumnal wistfulness
On meadows, hills and hedgerows -
A gentle touch that strokes
The colours towards their winter sleep.

So my dear, toss the coin and pray its heads you win.

Playing Brag or Vingt-et-un?
Cross your fingers and just may
be you'll get the cards you want.
Oh yes, my dear, Fate will deal a winning hand - if it's on your side.
So study hard what it wants and how you can provide it.
Ensure you never tempt it, though, nor ever disregard it.
Observe, my dear, the many rules Fate lays down and wants obeyed before you get its blessing.

The storm waves came across the sea, whipped to foam by the wind, and dark with frenzied fury. We would be drowned, our boat capsized or smashed against the rocks, and shouting loud, "Good Lord!" we prayed, "save us! Save us! Save us!"

The child lay dying by the road, and gathered all around, her brothers, sisters, mum and dad and passing sympathisers. How could, some asked, so terrible a thing have happened at that hour when the world had seemed so measured and so normal?

I went with a rifle into the garden, and seeing an apple at some distance swelling on a branch, for amusement shot at it, and unwittingly sent a speeding bullet to make a deadly assignation with a hare, lurking unseen by me, beyond the hedge and in the ditch, its sudden scream quite startling me.

How far into our pasts stretched the paths that brought us both to this sad coincidence?
Was it always to be, since time begun, our fates to meet that day?

And what of the child dying by the road and the driver whose car had struck her?

What of the storm? What of the waves that swamped the boat and sent it to the bottom?

Did Fate deal the cards we hold in our hands minutes or hours or eons before we get to play them?

Is it ever on our side? Does it even care?

You sent me hurtling to the ground,
and here I lie, quite broken.

Your words, flung so quickly off your teeth were spears with poisoned tips.
Your eyes had no remorse when they saw me fall
and everything inside me
die.

Falling leaves released from life
tumble through the air,
and they had been so beautiful in their dying hours.
Gorgeous ornaments displaying in the sun,
showing off their colours, dressing up the hillsides for a gala show;
a set designers' whim beyond price to stage;
a super panorama for summer's final fling.
Then came the end, so suddenly;
a curtain falling to the ground and
now we see a darkened world -
bones of trees and cold winds blow and
death is under foot.

The leaves, heaped high,
will turn to slime and fill the air with their decay.

I, like them, have my hour.
I would that they had never fallen;
that what they hid I never saw.

Her face shiny from plastic surgery,
the rich, old, taught-skinned woman from Florida
on a luxury cruise to the Arctic Circle
saw the midnight sun and said:
"Is that the same sun we have in Florida?"
Yes, lady. The very same.

The same sun that shines on you
and your car and your pool
and your lawn which the man
who frightens you a bit because he's poor, and black
and might one day rape you,
cuts to within half an inch its life
every week.
The same sun that shines
on the child who lives in a shack
on empty, fly-blown land
on which misery grows
outside Harare, and his
father's dead of AIDS and his
mother's dying too, and
he never has clean water to drink, and
his body's covered in sores.

The same sun, Ma'am, that shines
on Darfur's daily dying, and
the pain and poverty and deprivation
which those mascara eyes
poking out from
expensive rejuvinating face creams never see,
because they never want to.

And inside the head behind them,
ignorance feasts and swells with fat.

Thesis:
I don't insist I hold your hand
or that I walk with you.
I don't insist I sometimes kiss
you softly on your cheek.
I don't insist on wishing you
were here by my side
or that, when looking up,
I should see you there.
All I do insist, my love,
is that you let me care.

Antithesis

That smile has ice in its eyes,
and the teeth, so white
ooze blood.
There's a fist in her head
that will pull out your heart
and her breasts
will stomp it to death.
Beware the treacle
spilling off her tongue,
beware her beguiling words.
She wants your money,
your house, your cars,
She'll get them now
if not then,
and when
they're hers, she'll
open that mouth
and she'll spit you out,
like a husk.

There had been blood in Croke Park
Irish blood wrung out
by the muscle of machine gun fire
in vengeance for English blood
shed in a quarrel as old as history;
the Irish and the English
at each other's throats
- father, son and holy ghost.
Each steeped in
certainty of being in the right.

There was blood
on the turf and blood
in the stands
and hate in a people's heart.
So where is it now?
Where did it go?
The echo of those guns
can never now survive
the welcome in Croke Park
for an English sporting side.

Move stealthily about the house
baby's trying to sleep.
Move stealthily about the house
whisper when you speak
Move stealthily about the house
don't make that floarboard creak.
Move stealthily about the house,
baby's trying to sleep.

Move stealthily about the house,
grandad's lying in there
Move stealthily about the house
step quietly on the stair.
Move stealthily about the house,
we don't want him to hear.
Move stealthily about the house,
Grandad's dying in there.

On Wings

So my dear, toss the coin and pray its heads you win.

Playing Brag or Vingt-et-un?
Cross your fingers and just maybe you'll get the cards you want.
Oh yes, my dear, Fate will deal a winning hand - if it's on your side.
So study hard what it wants and how you can provide it.
Ensure you never tempt it, though, nor ever disregard it.
Observe, my dear, the many rules Fate lays down and wants obeyed
before you get its blessing.

The storm waves came across the sea,
whipped to foam by the wind, and dark with frenzied fury.
We would be drowned, our boat capsized or smashed against the rocks,
and shouting loud, "Good Lord!" we prayed, "save us! Save us! Save us!"

The child lay dying by the road,
and gathered all around, her brothers, sisters,
mum and dad and passing sympathisers.
How could, some asked, so terrible a thing have happened at that hour
when the world had seemed so measured and so normal?

I went with a rifle into the garden,
and seeing an apple at some distance swelling on a branch,
for amusement shot at it,
and unwittingly sent a speeding bullet
to make a deadly assignation with a hare,
lurking unseen by me,
beyond the hedge and in the ditch,
its sudden scream quite startling me.

How far into our pasts stretched the paths that brought us both to this sad coincidence?
Was it always to be, since time begun, our fates to meet that day?

And what of the child dying by the road and the driver whose car had struck her?

What of the storm? What of the waves that swamped the boat and sent it to the bottom?

Did Fate deal the cards we hold in our hands
minutes or hours or eons before we get to play them?

Is it ever on our side? Does it even care?

You sent me hurtling to the ground,
and here I lie,
quite broken.

Your words,
flung so quickly
off your teeth,
were spears with poisoned tips.

Your eyes had no remorse
when they saw me fall
and
everything inside me die.