Restoration

Lightning. Rain crashing on the window pane, to wake me
and keep me writing. I'm drawn to storms, to the darkness of the tree
that looms across the lake.

You can still see the scars on the trunk where the car hit, they've
grown over now, faint reminders of deeper cuts in the soft pith of
parents and friends.

The night after the car wreck I walked the road beyond the tree at
two or three o'clock in the morning. Winter, with my crombie coat
tucked about my chin, head down into the wind and rain. I pushed
myself home.

Nights later, I passed a poppy wreath blowing between road and
ditch, thinking it would not be found come morning. But returning
home just after dawn, I saw it thrown back beneath the tree.
A chance act of the last gust.

Strandhill

A cold Atlantic breeze
Embracing, retaining,
Reclaiming her own to
The sea. The sea
Is hushing, hushing
Me west into the sun.

Below the storm beach
The tides are turning,
Spreading, creeping over
The sands. The sands
Are shifting, shifting
Always beneath my feet.

Above a cloudy sun
Is hazing, blinding,
Baking the sea, the sand,
And I. And I
Am chasing, chasing
Shadows from the beach.

And all through time
The dark returning,
Palling, stealing away
This place. This place
Is dreaming, dreaming
Of the sleeping and the waking,
Of the living and the dead.

Song For No Voices

All the words I loved are gone,
Leaving me, mouth stopped,
With this slack tongue,
My jaw locked with rigor.
There are things left unsaid,
Of course, there always are,
On one side or the other.

But I remember how my
Outstretched arm would circle
The nape of your neck,
Your head lolling forward,
Full of sleep. The sweat
On the curls below your jaw,
A breast-brush on my thumb
That timed your breathing.

I remember feeling the foetus stir
Beneath your skin, under my limp
Hanging hand, how your turning
Legs encircled mine, hot tears
On my cheek and warm kisses.
It's these things I'm willing you
To remember, willing you to forget.

What's left to say? I left
Too quick, too quick, my love,
Like the turn of a kiss; left you
To batten down your grief with nails;
Give sorrow to the warm wood and
Tell our child, that I never knew,
I never knew.

An Trá Bhán

My feet already know the way
Through the whispering recesses
That form the capillaries of this
Inner country. As though walking
Home on radar, late, along bedding
Planes and pavements; these synaptic
Roads are shadowlands of a landscape
More alien than imagined.

I am drawn here, sure footed, agile,
Across borders, into tunnels, under walls,
The air is cat-gut taut and silence is
Shredding frost into the misty sublimation
That is sleep. And I become a child
Again, climbing Karsts and clacking
Off pebbles, become beached here
Where the stepping stones melt into cliffs.

The waves foam around the blowhole like
Rabid dogs and I can go no further, but
I can see the sea blanket and uncover
Beaches further off, in time with my
Hard breathing. It's as though I stand
Here as I've always stood, ready,
To step off, to fall into the boiling
Under overhangs that threatens
To tear down the world.

Biography

Nigel McLoughlin was born in Enniskillen in 1968. He holds an MA in Creative Writing (Poetry) from Lancaster University and Poets' House. He was short-listed for the 1999 Sunday Tribune/Hennessy Awards and placed 3rd in the Kavanagh Awards in 2000. He is currently working towards his PhD in Creative Writing with Lancaster University. Hs first collection 'At The Waters' Clearing' is due jointly from Flambard Press and Black Mountain Press in July.

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