Singing from the Ground
—a Droighneach, an Irish form—
The farmhands gather to eat and all seem delighted;
harvest of the dried corn is done in the bottomland,
And I’m struck by a guth or a puth of tobacco.
Both seem to hold memories of Ireland.
I’ve forgotten most of the language, most everything,
but there sings from this ground a rún, a harvestmoon,
gallagh-gunley, spreading its shape across stubble fields,
across streams, and across the sea. The harvestmoon
once brightened the heather fields of my ancestors,
moonlight poured on their backs as they sheepherded
near craggy bluffs. That same moon is out, shimmering
on us; the men finish supper, and they realize
they must gather the rest of the crop, combining
before gushing rains muddy the fields, rendering
them impassable. I reap all night, imagining
mounds of grain, dreaming of my farming ancestry.
Falconry
—a séadna, an Irish form—
Flying berkuts, Mongols hunted
hundred-pound wolves. Kubla Khan
kept hundreds of falcons, Britain’s
hawks sinned, herons mostly slain.
Falconers now seek a balance
between hunger and the need
to overpower, no longer
misreading nature. I feed
my young; I do not slay simply
to slay. I begin with a cling
to the aerie, where the tiny
fledgling can be found, its wings
not ready. Hours of training—
teaching the eyas the hand—
are spent every day; wisely,
I find only fresh game and
choice meats. When full grown, the rufter’s
rehood and the jesses tied.
The lure is then twirled and lengthened;
I slide off hood, let her glide
flat, then she rises; she’s scanning
sky. She feels a thousand eyes
sweeping over her; there’s terror
inside her turn of wings. I
read the writing, these blue pages
of pursuit, scripture etched by
talons; this raptured crowd allured
by style, culture, and reigned flight.
Monet’s Water Gardeners
—a rannaicheacht ghairid, an Irish form—
his lilies
wait inside to miss the freeze
in black bags in the basement,
clipped and bent, anxious to squeeze
up tendrils
of stalks and dozens of thrills
for the water gardener
whose age has whittled his skill
he’d go wading,
preening each plant: removing
brown growth, deadheading spent blooms,
dusting luminous, stunning
even him-
self with the results. those whims
had to end. the gardener
remembers Monet, the brim
of his wide
hat nodding on the bankside,
as he prepared his brushes
and his crushed paints. the boat slides
by, Monet’s
pond workers stop for the day;
the boat is crammed with offal,
beautiful lily rafts sway.
the water
gardener sadly ponders
the scene. the leaves are decayed
and yellowed. the flowers are
brown corpses,
floating face down, his senses
cannot ignore the eyesores,
the deformed look of lilies.
Paul Brooke’s poetry has been published internationally in Ireland, Germany, New Zealand, and England in The Brobdingdagian Times, Litspeak, Magma, and Takahe, respectively. In the United States, his work has been featured in such journals as the North American Review, Rocky Mountain Review, Flyway, International Poetry Review, Isotope: A Journal of Literary Nature and Science Writing, and the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature and the Environment. He is the author of three books including Light and Matter, Mediations on Egrets, and Sirens and Seriemas (to be released in 2014 by Brambleby Books). Brooke is a mix of English, Irish, and Swedish blood and his grandmother, Geraldine O’Connor, was an inspiration to his life and his writing.
–Art by Sarah Hardy
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