A Poem for Ciaran

A Poem for Ciaran

BY FANNY HOWE

The stroll from my cell

along the path above the donkeys

past a door open, a door shut

and a strong smell of wood

and cigarettes ends where

music helps white marguerites

cut through the masonry. 

*

Dark for words with a clicking wren

a yellow tit and over the clover a

shovel and a rustle of grain.

He's training calves with shouts and food

to follow him to another field

before the second bell.

*

Broom loops over the buttercups. 

These names

give birth to cones and needles, ferns

with mini-sacs of pollen attached.

It only takes one shot of spittle on green

for my brother to explain the sexual life

of the forest and honeybees.

*

Simon says he would like to live alone

in a cottage with a garden,

no humans, no obligations.  Solitary

I prefer a pod while he likes hives.

We confess we both wear armor

outside our habitats.

*

Water was our first armor before our skin.

Then came the bristle of sunshine.

And a thickening of blood into oil

or syrup in the lower veins.

*

I hate the thistledown

covering my prototype now

interior layer cowering at power

or shout, but can laugh

with the one who has sap under

his skin pouring the bucket

the hand is carrying.

*

Brother, help me find an animal

who will rescue me from

sharp delirium of fear beyond armor

and my friends the birds

by an open window:  to be clear

would be wonderful.

A sigh without the ghostly gasps

that accompany a certain voice.

Still I still do desire more

of the kind no one can see or hear.

Not that second, rasping breath of triumph.

Find me instead

more like the breathy Saint Bernard.

But a little dog

A cask of brandy hanging at his neck