'Rathkeale, Co. Limerick' (from 'Come To Pass' [Oversteps Books, 2015])

Rathkeale 

(County Limerick)

This moment happens like a red leaf
blowing out of mist

in it,
a car full of soured, mid-holiday faces
clips a Georgian corner,
folds a mirror like a ricochet
with no shot to breed it
and jolts off, ancient dusts roused again,
chasing its wings

birds that cannot settle
on the bell-waves that soften the town
make for some secret place, perhaps,
where one of the shining men
laid his cowl and bones to an oak,
slantwise

an old woman, all energy steered
to the fullness of her hands--
the cards, prescriptions--
dies where she stands
from a hole-in-the-wall’s shouty brightness--
gets her corpse somehow away
to an alley’s last overhang

will we point ye to the hairdresser?

the ringleted tykes shinny down their question,
turn into a shriek of heels,
leave the bald man like burning stone

a lunch-hour boy,
earpiece and pecs and belligerence,

kicks the future down the street
in a shirt of gauleiter blue

the coffee-girl, late,

wakes the afternoon with her breasts
from its little sleeps
dispersed among pearl spigots--with her sigh
in which hope is just making to turn
from the last bridge of the parish

next minute, the rain,
smoking where gutters
don’t quite meet the flags--
all the sea-hauling clouds
down and thick together
like tipped-off soldiery