Remainders

1.

the young stream beside me

willows a careless path

giving off an easy cant

through bog grass

I am on my back

I am warm and I am young and I am hidden

from the casting of the sleán

unbound and

above me a naked sky

open and simple

a bee passes

I am whole

drunk on the taste

of a roofless dream of air

2.

the festival is in full swing when

I receive the party drugs

open-mouthed

like a slave brought to communion

it is too late to wish you hadn’t

after you’ve swallowed

the angels leave

I am extinguished

morning and mud

and the pride that is worse than regret

and everything is down

and nothing works any more

there is only one way through

I know this before I know

I shrug and begin tunnelling

in to the bottomless dream of earth

3.

and sometimes when I am walking

and when gravity agrees with the weather

my body will accept me again

the sting of breath

the subversive promise of pulse

decisions of muscle

and a trick of matter

in the wind

in the rain

beneath my feet

and if I am lucky

calculation will lose its grip

striving will become stride

and I am able to cease denying

this treacherous dream of flesh

Remainders © 2022 Fergus Deffely