The Harbor

The small harbor drains itself in the morning, revealing seaweed, shells, and pieces of rope from lost ships. Seagulls skim the waters to catch imaginary fish in
winter, but they leave forlorn, screaming their
disappointment. A dark, leathery, drunken man wanders onto the Quay, looking for his atonement in trash cans and bottles. No one turns around to see him seep back into the stone. The moon still hangs, like a sliver of memory, in the sky, calling back the twilight.

Overlooking the Bay

Kinvara's small harbor sways its boats during the full moon. Cows rub against stone fences and grunt in their dreams. The banshee sleeps beneath megalithic mounds. Clouds roll up into the skies. Red poppies wither in rain. Bramble creeps along the Burren to reclaim a dead fox. In the distance, the old fever hospital still crumbles in remorse, overlooking the bay.

Gougane Barra

The moss, growing luminescent under the wet stones. The caves, leaking perpetually to punish the flesh in prayer. The black crosses, scratched on the walls, acting as amulets against the shadows in the leaves. And inside a small cell, next to the lake, in nightfall, an old hermit stokes the fire. He mutters the names of god as he stirs the ashes.

Ballindereen Refuge

Taking refuge in Ballindereen, my bones rest in the
seaweed swaying against the pier, my soul sits on the back of a piper picking at the sand, and my heart keeps as steady as the wet stone beneath my feet, and my eyes close, as I slowly inhale the twilight that pulls the moon in its wake.

The Silver Coin

Dreaming of Rumi, of a shadow, of a silver coin with Rumi's face (a good luck piece for the astral) and the broken tether for following this invisible road, as tangible as the breath, for walking into the garden, where few return, dreaming.

After

Hours later, after listening to a woman's chod prayer, I give away my ribs and heart and feet to all sentient beings in all the realms, after listening to the breath inside the breath, I dream quietly in the kitchen. It begins to rain, and parts of me turn to ash and float on the invisible sea.

The Crows

At night, the black crows pick at the white snow, searching for worms, buried within the soil, searching for bread that keeps them in winter, searching for the spirits that linger in the stones. At night, the black crows know that the heavy rains will come, that an old hag, smelling like the sea, with knotted hair, still cries for the moon, and that the failed saints still murmur in the Burren.

^

Biography

Originally from San Francisco, he now spends time writing and questing for the Grail in the West Ireland. His poems have appeared in Watchword Press and The Old Red Kimono, and a collection of poems, Days of the Dead, will be published by Parthenon Press in San Francisco in the near future.