Entropy

Map for a Voyage
A boy is born
in a sea of shadows and dreams
he swims
from shore to shore
he moves in time
between unknown faces and figures
their faces a map for a voyage
to the unsolved riddle
a spider web is crafted around him
made of love, time and loneliness

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DPCRLJC6

In Turbulent Times

excerpt

of a decision to yield to the spite of neighbours and refuse the post. She accepted. She faced the barbs and bolts. She won.
‘She’s Finn MacLir’s granddaughter,’ Clifford Hamilton averred as if that were justification enough.
At last only the ignorant rabble still pilloried the beautiful Nora Carrick. But only in private, whispering to one another on draughty street corners or in dimly lit parlours cleansed of Satan’s influence and man’s humanity. The hard, bogwood faces; the grey granite jaws; the sour, crab-apple eyes; the sharp, blackthorn tongues: these people sickened Liam to his stomach. The country had a warp of unyielding cruelty that showed in unsightly streaks through the soft, colourful filling of the weft. If only God would patch up all those streaks and dye the warp of nature with everlasting, indestructible compassion. God’s failure to do so was enough to call His very existence into question.
Nora came each morning to the school, appearing with a cheerful smile like the sun at dawn. She lit up Liam’s daily life. When she left after each short morning’s teaching she plunged him into the grey gloom of winter afternoons. Sometimes she stayed late: to prepare for special lessons; to make something for use in class; to talk over ideas with Liam; to discuss her pupils’ progress; to ask Liam’s help; to make plans for the future of the school. On those occasions she would cook a lunch for both of them. They would talk as they ate, sitting by the window table in the small kitchen of Liam’s quarters, looking across the fields to where the church stood on its stony ridge, the sea out of sight behind it. A tarmacadam drive now led to the church from the main Lisnaglass-Carraghlin road. On either side of the drive the old thorn trees, the banks of whin and the fuchsia hedges that Nora remembered as a little girl had all been cleared away. On the east side of the drive a larger school had been built, incorporating more spacious accommodation for the teacher. The old school across the drive had been demolished, and plans were being drawn up for a parish hall to be built on the site —‘after the war,’ as was the common addendum to the mention of any such plans. Beside the demolished school the rectory for the parish priests of Corrymore and Aughnashannagh stood behind a dry-stone wall.
Electricity had come to the school and the rectory, and many more cars or even Fordson and Ferguson tractors filled the newly surfaced lane to the church on Sundays.
‘You knew and admired the former parish priest here, Liam, didn’t you?’ Nora had said on that day that Liam would never forget. ‘Father Padraig. My mother’s adopted brother.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763270

Troglodytes

V
Chamomiles smile shyly at the laughing
sun rays, the gown of dawn hangs loose
from the Kore’s curves and
the meadow weeps at the trail
of blood ascending from the purgatory.
Shadowy resolution guiding greed
as logos counted in unlimited bottles
drop by drop blood in blood
in battles unlimited flesh against flesh
becomes the myth of martyrdom.
Logos baptizing the little waves
with new names and dressing
the breeze in fancy garments, designs
and aphorisms; logos hurled out
of the mouth of cannons to dazzle
the minnows, and the flies, the jibs
and the keels and the mariners
who sail to the east with
their eyes turned to the west.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0978186583