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For R.

 Cobh, July 29th.




I sit in your shadow at the harbour’s edge 

Where the Atlantic breathes promises in sea salt on Cohb’s old stones 

I sit, notebook in hand, rested on aching knees

Watching the blue/grey pour itself over water 

Like whisky in God’s own cut glass

And you? -

You’re back in Cork now, or London, maybe Toronto 

- wherever the wind carried your big heart

After we learned that love cannot be split down the middle 

We are like driftwood, splintered but kind 

Still so beautiful, but no longer whole.


I hear children now, and in your voice I think:

“Christ! Jaysus! The mouths on them!”

Their shrieks of “crackhead!”, “Feck!” “Bollocks!” at disinterested seagulls 

As their mothers gather laundry from lines distant

Strung out between crumbling council houses like prayer flags 

In a country scarred in green and catholic guilt 

The workmen pack up now, their barrels of sand lay waiting in the cobblestone 

Their tools downed and left for the night

- and I think of us 

How we had held each other so loose to allow each other to breathe 

But not tight enough to stop slipping from each others greedy grasp one hungover dawn


Now somewhere music plays

Whilst teenagers smoke grass by the monument 

- one to those who left and never came back 

Unlike us - 

We, we found a way to stay 

Lust transformed into something deeper 

- not quite steady but like a boat 

Soaked like the rocks in something like respect. 


I lean against the cracked sea wall 

And rewrite your name in my notebook 

There is no eulogy for us darling 

- but gratitude for our strange alchemy 

That turned young golden days in London

Into a rare kind of silver of enduring care 


I close my notebook now knowing 

- that you were right about this sunset 

Right about how somethings worth waiting for 

Are worth witnessing alone.


and I - 

I - carry this evening in my pocket 

And rise slowly from the hard stone 

The 8.15 back to Cork waits for me

To board the engine that promises city lights 

Dreams and pubs carressed by voices 

Love we learned is not about possession 

Sometimes it’s about allowing the tide to carry us 

Both to different shores. 



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