The Ink Is Warm, The Gloves Are Off

And So,

It Is Time To Write:

DAVID

You Are Like Granite

Chalk

A Rubber Band

Ready To Drop

Crush

Flake Or Break

S t   r   e     t     c       h

Bend Over Backwards

And Do Other Impossible Feats

Your Pale Eyes Lead

Back To The Island

Where Wild Animals Chorused

In Your Childhood Dreams

Now No-one Is Kinder

More Gentle

But You Seem

Not To Have Grown So

No

Rather To Have Simply

Remained So

Even Though

Even While

Torrents Of Cynicism

Washed Over

By And Around

You

Who Were Always

Looking In An Other

A Unique Direction

As If At Something

Of Which

You Would Never Tell

Even If You Could

And As For ‘Should’

You Never Learned

That Evil Word

Somehow Supplanted

In Your Cot

By The Timely Shriek

Of An Owl

The Scurry Of A Marten

Or the Red Brush

Of A Squirrel’s Tail

Paul O’Kane, November, 2016