THE GAP BETWEEN OUTSTRETCHED HANDS

I heard about a refugee walking away from his home,
fleeing with hundreds of others to wherever the road led,
when he saw a child hurt in a ditch and weakened at her yelp,
pleading for someone to notice, crying out for anyone to help.


Trying to stand still in the slow-slick of human weariness,
the man was in more than two minds, momentarily focused
on this small human object. Locked in their stare, breath with breath,
the gap between outstretched hands deciding his life or her death.

BANSHEES

The kitchen bulb shone out a brilliance of protective comfort.
The slight safety of the light path crossed our back garden and on,
fading into the next garden.  Emptying the house rubbish
into the dustbin was better in daylight, when the cold swish


of banshees and spirits from Smicker's ploughed field could not be felt
by a nervous little boy.  At night, the first steps would be slow,
eyes and ears sharp for sights and sounds, real or imaginary,
in the blackness with its shapes and motions to scare.  Turn and flee,


sprinting the few yards from bin to door was the only option,
faster and faster breaths, the breeze's chilling stroke on the neck
causing nerve end shivers and coordination to depart.
Back inside behind a slammed door, the thuds of a thumping heart.


The kitchen bulb is now a fluorescent tube, forty years on.
The nervous boy's a man but thoughts of banshees are far from gone.

CHRISTMAS CRIB OUTSIDE ST TERESA'S CHURCH

It was the highlight of the year,
apart from toys on Christmas day,
to see the outdoor crib
where the baby Jesus lay.


Memory and maturity spoil
the wonder of it all
for the star was a bulb
and Jesus was a doll.

OLD FOLKS

They sit for hours around the edge of the square lounge,
weak, wrinkled, balding, staring, not staring, alone in the confines
of armchair space, locked in the routine of sleeping, eating, sitting,
wondering about the faces, the picture shows sliding across their minds
and trying to understand the occasional urge to smile.

RESTING PLACE (THE CAFE CHAIR)

It is a straight street
of white buildings
against a blue sky
and there is a cafe
of romance
where I plan to die


I will sit in sunshine
in a dapper suit
tip my Panama hat
to ladies passing by
as I sip my last coffee
and listen to the chat


I will remember
good moments
and breathe easy air
relaxing in paradise
and die on
the cafe chair

HERCULES STREET, THE STREET OF BUTCHERS

Note: Royal Avenue in Belfast was once called Hercules Street. It was dominated by butchers' shops.  This poem was written in the late 1970s, a troubled time.


The gob spit on their palms bubbled,
each man with his own trust juice
slapping hands in solid contracts,
expected, fair, untroubled.


At the other end of the street
thrifty wives with a duty
to cook their husbands hot dinners
watched fairly clean hands cut meat.


Forty seven butchers shops lined
the bustling, quaint thoroughfare,
the whole city astir and noisy -
rush, gossip, traffic combined.


Trading rivals aimed to compete -
innkeeper, baker, grocer,
cork-cutter, yarn-spinner, blacksmith,
all out of place on the meat street.


It was a time in Belfast's life,
but the bubbling juice is now blood
in these days of little jostle,
of bang, boom, siren, drum and fife.

UNPREDICTABLE GIT

We had the pup for only a few days before Sammy drowned it.
To this day, nearly fifty years on, I do not know why he killed
the innocent creature.  Pup versus man-off-the-rails is no match
of fairness or reason.  But Sammy was an unpredictable git.


He had been in trouble with the police for petty offences
and so was not shy in coming forward to stir things up for laughs,
playing the outlaw, pouring fear into our hearts, menace into our lives
and disbelief into the big, sad, struggling eyes of a young dog.


Inches long, the pup's body lay on the path with us kids around it.
To poke it, to leave it alone, to think of excitement or sin,
to chuck it in the long grass or to bury it like human dead,
choices to ponder.  Yes, Sammy was an unpredictable git.