Before you throw me to my death from your high and scornful tower, just remember that certain things will always be true: half of us are used like mules to carry the others into oblivion; we don’t know if the world’s first sound was a groan a sigh a cry of joy of pain of… Continue reading Last Words

Stingrays are the underwater shadows of the distant beaches of my childhood: gliding abysses with dead eyes and clown mouths below the clear surface and slow gleaming days, passing back and forth all summer long and constantly prowling the sand of my dreams. Species are currents in an ocean of genes – adapting, evolving, disappearing… Continue reading ONE DARKNESS HOLDS THEM ALL

That clump of trees just up ahead is pulsing and boiling with birds, thousands packed tightly together like smoke; a chattering, chirping autumn turbine gathering energy for departure. You can sense the power building, peaking as more and more arrive, bending branches under the weight of their massed impatience. At a silent signal made every… Continue reading The Gathering

Under a sky the colour of extinction you choose your own conclusion. The Earth might have already done so: somewhere in its whirling mass of DNA and infinite genetic possibilities is the clue to what will replace us. Perhaps an existing creature will evolve, switching on latent capabilities that have lain dormant for millennia, or… Continue reading INHERITANCE

The spiders in the corners are my guards. They hang from webs, long legs gripping strands, sensing every quiver of my nerves. Somewhere out there are the other rooms where the lives I might have led are locked while the many people I might have been stand in corridors and pound on doors. My spinning… Continue reading House Arrest

A homeless moon lingers over the town. I linger with it, both of us bracing for single combat with oblivion at the crossroads where silence is spoken. I was interrogated once again during the night but betrayed only myself. I want to believe in the future and in life’s rosy emptiness, but shadows block my… Continue reading EYEWITNESS OF THE INVISIBLE

Two poems just published in issue 201 of Orbis. The first one is about the gulls we know who live on the roofs around us; like dogs and cats, they all have different personalities once you get to know them. The second poem is about my father in Australia.  DINOSAURS ON THE ROOFFor the gulls of… Continue reading Two Poems

Two poems just published in the An Aítiúil anthology. The theme was Ireland, so my poems are about what it means to me to return to live in Ireland generations after my family left. ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY YEARSCarrowbehy Bog A lot has happened in five generations,but nothing can have changed between these hillsthat have… Continue reading Two Irish Poems

THIRD VIEW OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS Central India, 1 BC You must have watched so many battlesdawn, Trishanku.And you know what it meansto want too much;I’m hanging upside downbetween the earthI took for grantedand the sky I dreamed of reaching.I’ve never feared the rolling dice of war,but the wheel of lifeis spinning backwards now, Trishanku. Low Tide… Continue reading Three Poems

Two recently published poems today. The first one is part of a series exploring what it means for me to have returned to live in Ireland generations after my family left. The Famine Way is a long stretch of road leading from Strokestown in Roscommon (where my family came from) to Dublin. In the 1840s… Continue reading On the Famine Way and Phase Change