shatterproof

She taught me well.
Beware of breaking glass,
no boiling water on it,
or it will shatter.
See? She poured in gently
and the jamjar cracked ominously.

(The world would shatter, everything could crack ?)
Don't get drunk, always warm the pot
before putting in the tea.
Never write on lined paper.
Mostly don'ts, leading imperceptively
to the grand I do, he does.

Through years' experiments
they invented strengthened glass,
unsplintering beneath
hot coffee and boiling tea.
Away from her, emotions flourished
and surviving random splinters
I stand knee-deep in shattered glass,
a toughened adventuress.

Dust

Released from the map,
wide as freedom on the train
a plain of fields
flat, wide, empty,
a green stripe of memory
erased by stations
(the city soon distracts
but
if one house alone
were built
in all that wide brightness -
from everywhere, spicegrinders of dust
would gently, daily,
scatter across its sideboard.

^

Biography

I was trained as an artist at Liverpool College of Art,and have been writing poetry since childhood. A poem is a portable painting! Living in Galway, poems have appeared in the local Burning Bush, also in Books Ireland, Poetry Ireland Review, Cuirt Journal (and next in West 47),Orbis, Poetry Monthly, plus a broadcast on Sunday Miscellany( August 12th last). Exhibitions at The Bank of Ireland Arts Centre, August 2001, Davis Gallery, dublin, Nov 2000. Just appeared, on Oct 10th, at Poetry Ireland Introductions series at Pearse House.