Sundials
Garden pathways
Shadows under trees
Deepening green coniferous
Needles prickling my knees.

Mythry recalled
Lichen stones where mosses crawled
Encroaching viridescent cage around dad’s truck yard wall.

A monkey puzzle tree
Grabbed for curiosity
Who sat and scratched
Their heads more
Made-up lemurs
Or was it me?

I foraged underneath
Musty pines, forgotten rhymes
Then in for China tea
Were the leaves from there
Or porcelain?
So delicate and delft
Camellia scents, East Orient
In cups,
Of Antwerp’s theft
Our European wealth
Taken spoil
From conquered soils
Sit on aunty’s shelf.

Wide angle shots of youth
Senses undulated
Recalled house
On Blackglen Road
Fact, fiction, complicated.

Swarm misinformation
They watch Fox News at 2am
For laughs and conversation
Report divided nation
Whether here or there
We have a flare
For hyperbolic statement.

Deep state down
Not underground
It’s written on their faces
As they rile us up for ratings.

Those were times
In concealed fields
Fiery gorse and elevated
Now I’m here
Realising love
Is best given
Than when taken.

Sure
Hold on.

He grips the ball
I drop my phone.

II

Around this time of year we find ourselves with a little
more time to sort through things
Meaghan found a photo from 1978 when I was part of
another family of four
The photo was taken in Ardamine in County Wexford
Mum looks stunning
Dad looks thin
He is younger in that photo than I am now
The things we only glimpse as children often seem permanent
As if they have always been there
Like Dad’s truck yard.

But when I called my aunts to tell them about this picture
They told me today
That I went with them to the bank to get the loan for the yard
I was three
About the same age I was in that photograph
I thought it was always owned by our family
But nothing ever is

Always,
Nothing ever is always.