Créche
Picked you up
Each Wednesday
From the créche
On Pearse Street.

The big window
Is still there.
Looked in
Among the strange faces,

To see where you were.
Tied you into the buggy,
Wheeled you
Into the College Park,

Always afraid
It would rain.
Always afraid
You would cry.

Never sure
How to placate your moods.
Struggling inside myself
To placate my own.

At two o’clock,
I handed you back
To your mother,
At the tree

On Nassau Street.
It was as if
You were being passed
From one to the other.

When the split-up came,
You sided with your mother,
Shutting me out
For years.

Leaving me
To loneliness,
Damaged emotions,
Tears.

©By Oliver Marshall February, 2009

Fidelity
As I look back along a path of rounded cobble stones,
I see a tall but lightly built stone door.
Behind the door the path leads to a time when
Constellations of Stars were the mysteries of my life
And Humanity and its politics were not yet rooted.
At the threshold of this door Julius Caesar
Ruled the World and there I was braced
For travel, waiting, with my brother Fingers,
So called for he is a delicate thief.
There we were on horseback
And surrounding us were the spirits of greatness,
No journey could ever fail us as long
as they were there,
And now without ever touching the ground
We have arrived at a new place

Where we are siblings in a world that
has clocks that tick
Not by the rhythm of the seasons
But by the paucity of men’s deeds to valour
And the scarcity of men’s vows.

By Harry Cavendish

In my element
I am water, I am tidal
I always find my own level
I am like the sea water reflecting the many
colours of the sky
I am defined by such

Surrounding myself with beautifully
coloured flowers
I’ll present you with an image of them
In my mood, you will see them

In my smile, you will smell them
In lightness of my touch the delicacy
of their petals
The mixture of colours gives rise to the
Evocative elevated sense of being
I am swept off my feet by textures and forms

The basis of my sense of self is colour
Blissfully captivated and enraptured by all
the colour above, below, to the right
and left of me
Colour the essential factor
I am in my element.

By Valerie Coakley

What time…
I can’t believe you’re really gone
I keep picking up the phone
To call, to chat, to say hello,
What time will you be home?

The house is feeling empty
Even though we’re all still here
I’m dreading how it’s going to be
Next week, next month, next year.

All your books are really tidy
And your prayers and music too
Everything’s been kept just so
All that’s missing Dad is you

I’m looking at the tins of paint
You’d stored beneath the stairs
And the boxes full of all your tools
So neatly stacked in pairs.

I’d love to sit beside you
Watch you laugh while
telling me,
All about the goings on
In ‘Gray’s Anatomy’

I’m watching all your programmes
I sing and hum your song
What time will you be home Dad
You’ve been really gone too long..

By Theresa Whelan
Written for Thomas (Tom) Whelan
With Love.

Magnolia Brainstorming
Severed branch
Breathtaking beeauty
Flowers of the East
Magnolia Soulangii
Branches laden with blossom
Bound feet
Ladies with white faces
Enrobed in silk caftans
Mincing footsteps
High-pitched voices
Bicycles breeding like rabbits
Houses bereft of clutter
Simplicity – peace – restful

By Valerie Coakley

Elegy For John McGahern
Night in Aughawilan.
You sleep beside your mother
In the countryside you wrote about.

You have gone
Into that darkness
Where the mind is happy with itself,

And does not need
To worry about how
Something should be named.

Yet your imagination
Still threads things together:
The day you picked flowers

For your mother, your mind
Not worrying about how
To name them,

As if their names
Were inside you anyhow.
Time would bring them out.

Or you remember
The short September days
When you took up

Apples from the grass,
Your eyes observing
Their plae red skins,

Your hands
Wary of the dying wasps
Clinging to the sides.

You do not need
To describe these things anymore.
You are content enough

As you sleep
Beside your mother,
Facing the rising sun.

©By Oliver Marshall

As always, we welcome contributions to
The Poetry Place, which can be sent to the
‘NewsFour’ offices at 15 Fitzwilliam Street,
Ringsend, Dublin 4.