Gondolas

Gondolas empty as coffins
knocking on green canal water,
redolent of wood in winter,
the tethered hollows of your absence.

At the full the sinking Sun’s rays
through whose light we’ll never steer,
gondolas empty as coffins
knocking on green canal water.

The Basilica, Lido, islands,
all blent in one golden vapour,
and the scattered cafe tables
bare in the air of the dying year.

Gondolas empty as coffins.

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Ornithology

Perched on a pinnacle of brick
in a nest of green weed,
only the gull’s pearl-white breast makes sense.

A white lily of the sky neither
toiling or spinning,
sitting in God’s eye amid the human rush.

A little feather-folded boat, an Ark
on an urban Ararat,
plump and bright with nature’s purpose.

And bright with her own species of joy too,
this once-born phoenix,
to me, a mired ashen office statistic.

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Wexford Harbour

The boats along the quay
are boats
at the bottom of the sea.
Rigged reliquaries
in the warm plankton
of the darkness.

The hold of this night
preserves everything.
Ghosts of memory
are living material
along the boardwalk,
down the sidestreets,
weighing the air
with salt-sweet promise.

Life stops passing by,
but I keep moving.
Though stars are buoys
marking no constellations,
but drift low, close burning,
spilling votive fire
where deeps of feeling are.