Issue 10: June 2005

Luke Healey | Alan Jenkins | Barbara Marsh | Niall O'Sullivan | Eamonn Shanahan | Jean Sprackland | Todd Swift

LUKE HEALEY

Last Page of the Journal

Fleeting birds drink rainwater
from the barbecue in the yard.
The beach ball and paddling pool
lie depleted on the lawn.
The attic is icy, it groans
with the weight of your resolutions.
You've drunk too much tea,
nibbled a loaf to its book-end,
felt nostalgia for the infinite.
Button up. Pull yourself together.
The theatre curtains whispered to a close
as you gossiped to a shadow
in the back-row seats. Now it's time
to sit in the lamplight and write
that business letter; time
to drown your pen in the inkpot
then turn in for the earliest of nights.

The Magician on the Bridge

Midnight in June. No one's around
except for a wolfhound leading
its owner onwards. A lorry
shifts down in the distance.
Heavy minerals crawl along the river bed.

Another deck of cards fans out.
Always I believe I can fool the magician
but the card is destiny.
Diminishment lies in the wake,
mystery at the fork of the river.

Tonight's air is thick with dreams
that flit like moths towards the moon;
some of them drifting over the oaks and willows,
others hovering in the branches
along with a spectral plastic bag.

Snail Shell

The owner vanished and left
no forwarding address. Only
the breeze wanders now
in this hall of dust-veiled pearl.

The inside winds thought around a riddle:
what's known disappears in the utopia
of the horizon's fade
or the inward spiral of sleep.

If you knock, no-one will
open its invisible door. If you try
to send a postcard it will
come back marked Return To Sender.

December Mystics

Today when the sky is a glassy blue
it's almost possible to see beyond
to the mute tracts of space
pressing against these earthbound spheres;
but the clouds that once were above us
have baffled their way inside my body
so that I only know
this enclosure of frost, this mesmerised pond.
Meanwhile the mystics crouch
in a wilderness cave.
Not one says a word
as they count their reserves of small change:
those worn-down coins that leave
an acrid trace on the fingers.