The fluctuation hit me like a ton of bricks And now I am in bits As she sails to another sea Never knowing the weather she visited on me And it’s like a plume You can tell it’s been in the room Because there is a fume That wafts And you could say she’s daft But it’s more than that She’s caught in a wave she can’t take back As she bullets into the sky And I wonder if I would’ve died If I’d met her on the road Because she never slowed In her speech And she is out of reach As I extend The part of me that would mend A sensory organ But I can’t get a word in As it rocks us back and forth And the worst part of a divorce Is you never see that person again Not in the same way, not women and men I wish her well Because I know the hell She is living in I also know that I cannot win When that’s in control God bless her and ease her soul As it beats against the cage it’s kept in I wonder does she know Him In her darkest day All the same I wouldn’t want to get in her way When she’s on the wrong side of the beach I think it’s the lesson she came to teach
I watch the images of bombed out bars And burnt out cars On city streets And I know that the heat Is born from a fervour deep and true I feel it in me and I see it in you And somehow peace has found a way To hold and that’s the order of the day It’s been 800 years And so many women have cried tears Over lost sons And I could be the one To finally unpeel The way they made our nation feel As they circumscribe the land And say this must be tilled by hand And no more than so many yards I don’t even know how hard It must have been And my dream Has been rocked Like the walls made up by people locked In Connemara by the rule of the day To hell or to Connaught, isn’t that the way And we can bark orders and we can make decrees But that Ireland isn’t me It’s something other It’s living and breathing for your brother And dying with hands crushed together Nowadays we just complain about the weather But the sadness is embedded in the roots Of the great tree that began as shoots From the fertile soil I feel my blood boil When someone talks about English rule The things they taught us in school About how to bend and break And why they did it for our sake And we must be respectful, too Because they are human just like you Then someone utters a word And just like that the bird Of hatred is born Because the fire of fear is still warm And glowing embers Not everyone knows but the heart remembers Even when the mind forgets And it’s not over yet Not till the trauma storm Has made the people realise they warm Their hands on the coals of the past And in some ways people are classed In the stratosphere I feel the time near When we must stand up and be counted Oh, what has it amounted To but this Heaven is in the first kiss
The Poetry Book 