by Afric McGlinchey

backward, to the shock of plant and animal, child.
Read it in the child’s face.
We used to make this garden our own:
that bit of green ground on the hummock.
You’d be quite loaded with hawthorn,
sacred as a white goddess,
three sorts of skink on various rocks
and in the pond, two minnow,
flakes in the air floating a look.
We’d fall asleep in a feeling element,
full of sweet noises
from the barn–bouncers, lifting
live larvae and crickets and grain,
fallen pearls on the fringe of a coat
jabbed shut like a clam.

Less than three feet across, by a hood of rocks,
gathers leaflike lichen.
They, whom the birds despise, start to cut —
not mud gelded by paraquat,
not bare paddocks bordered by a creek
— but trees, chiefly.
Where the woodmen lops, I see a demon
trampling down the near–naked earth
to the minimum,
leaving only white–shaken flowers
to swarm over dirty buses with coughing exhaust.
The night insects — locusts, cicadas — scream
at tree after tree fall, moist root upturned.
Snatched out of a dream, rain blurts,
in the end, from the urn that holds all its grief.

by John Liddy

Outdoors: A Glenstal Abbey Cycle
for Fr Brian

From a clearing in the woods with a view
across the fields, my swallow’s eye
delineated the road to Murroe

And came to rest in Ryan’s kitchen
among family and friends in the full
flow of an impromptu session

With Thea smiling between tunes
as Dan the Banjo Man, Jim
the Fiddler and Tommy Spoons

Rattled the china cups in the dresser;
the flag stones sparking from the flighty
steps of the half–set dancer.

On my way down to the Abbey gate
I saw them at their evening games,
cavorting with my reminiscences
above the earthly estate.

Voicing

All morning I roamed around
noting the storm’s devastation
in uprooted trees and bushes
lying mangled on the ground.

Under the arch of a bridge
I saw where students dumped
their pizza boxes and beyond,
a rain–covered hermitage.
In this chamber I sat for an age,
transfixed by silence and inter–
mittent birdsong as storms
elsewhere continued to rage.

Stepping indoors, I heard
the monks give voice
to life’s renewal at the ending
of the mass and recalled

The splendor of Christmas
Eve when a boy took flight
with Gregorian chant and one
female singer. She was

The lone songbird nature
gifted after the storm,
the one I had given thanks to
in the outdoor chamber.

Hindsight

Beyond the fields the boathouse
from where we rowed out
under a moon so bright its light
pierced the depths beneath us

With the pleadings of one
who could not swim,
the boat rocking like a cradle,
water pouring in.

Had there been no guardian
I would not be recalling the thrill
of the chain slip its mooring,
the relief as it found home again.

Enigma

Motionless beneath die canopy,
birds hopped around the floor,
indifferent to human presence,
imparting lessons in humility.

Then the clap of pigeons’ wings
sent them scurrying for safety.
Unable to follow, I immersed
myself in the understory.

by Kevin Kiely

this capitulation of the spirit among cityscape
and the banks are empty, lit from inside
so poke and digit for your virtual cash

as evening goes slow in the sky
and glacial windows reflect the traffic
trees are neglected and corpselike

where people spark electric
behind their set–piece faces towards
the bottle towers where it is spoken if unsaid

to our eyes by others over our lifetime
in our eyes and we feel like chess pieces
on diagonal streets stealing dreams

and done questing until tomorrow
and the next moment as our train slides
in before halting; it is the cosmic church–window

sunset slanting across bridges, parapets and lights
flooding sideways from darkened streets
and clouds are larger as we rehearse being brittle

delicate, ultimately immobile and the public clocks
are lying, imagine yourself a hero as these tragic clouds
redden, for if you drew in the ribbon of river

toppling the bridges, knocking over the piles
it is chaos more than calm behind each moment
when we can either endure and bear it or love it

Night settles in metaphysical jewelry
on the obvious buildings as the stars look
infinite and we are merely dressed, yet naked

various, dangerous, famous, anonymous, whole
broken, assuming intoxicated roles and you can
vouch to this fact that it is a lifelong relationship

with the dead who ride Jacob’s Ladders of escalators
where the solitary stare and ask as they float
in downward spirals a living genesis and census

alpha to omega; the locked museums hold less
than memories replaying flashbacks and the scenario
is revised fixing the original to a newer version for tonight

by Mark Granier

This game
is where letters
are given some rope, slack
to unwind with, make your name turn
its back.

What has
five fingers, a
clutched riddle unclasping
its light touch, two fingers sealing
its lips?

Cinquain
is just a name,
accident of birth, of
geography. Could have been less. Why
complain?

To fit
this many feet
on board, the old measure
is best. Count the elbow room in
cubits.

Give me
five. Tick off each:
warm skin, honey, sirens,
my sleeping breath as I turn to
face you.