Wanderings

Like lost children we wander,
our sad eyes search the horizon.
We leave the aquarium
where light filters down
and seek the cafes reflected back
in their splendor of smoke and shadow.
The dark palace floats past,
shedding mildew,
and the terrible rattle  of morning
shakes our bones on the u-bahn.

 Brighid Mulley, 2010

The Fell

Deep black gash
where old pram wheels, deflated footballs, tyres and skateboards slide
towards oblivion
as cold rain rakes your sides

But you wear the rain like the princess that you are
it drapes your feet
while black soil crumbles to
reveal the palimpsest of your desires

By daylight
small boys filch black coals
that adorn your hair

Then you are silent
but your shadow hums
and pigeons coo coo from their icing sugar houses

Brighid Mulley, 2010

Stone Words (Kirbuster Farm)

Faint stromatolite voices are borne
on sea winds
Pre-Cambrian breath of old red stone

“Mama, mama”

And the cradle opens before your anthropophagy
stone beds for the living and the dead

Red-brown waxy ears sprout
and listen from the grove outside

“Mama, mama”

Echoes in the little wooden house
whose empty rooms exhale
children’s voices, fossilized

“Mama, mama”

And ancient bones on shelves in boxes
remember you
and fling their stone-words
before your silent face

“Mama, mama”

Brighid Mulley, 2010