…
In this place there are empty shapes.
Spaces, moving. Here, there, everywhere.
Spaces moving among us, about us.
The shape of the missing,
we no longer hear, or see.
…
People we once knew, touched,
talked with, laughed with, cried too,
they were features of this place, this town,
they are missing now. Do we miss them?
Do we have a sense of the empty space they once filled?
…
Once, not so long ago, a month or so,
when I was engaged on my daily walk,
I would meet older people, some very old,
Late 80’s, early nineties…
…
The shirt cut off me with apologies,
the white t shirt underneath cut away too.
A meagre sacrifice to pay to save my life,
…
“Heart in TV” I thought they said,
Looks of disbelief as one said,
a heartbeat of two hundred and fifty seven
I listened as they talked together,
five men, and a female doctor,
in their greens and reds standing over me.
…
I thought I heard them say again,
“hearts in TV”,
Down their mobiles,
…
the thought amused me,
my heart is on TV,
but not for long this was an emergency.
…
…
Cuckoo spit on buttercups
…
She promised to pay a penny for each snail
not half expecting the bucketful
quickly brought back for her experiments
collected with a small boys enthusiasm
…
You could say our mother was not best pleased
to find the captives roaming in the night
leaving silver trails laced meanderings
on ceilings and bathroom walls
…
My sister showed me how to
stroke away cuckoo spit
with a blade of grass
to slowly delicately reveal
…
the bright green aphid
exposed in its lathering
spurtled white froth
she placed buttercups under my chin
to see whether the glow showed
I…
…
Turning our backs on the river
…
Storm Ciaron lashed in the week before last.
…
Bad enough you’d say, well anyone would say that
standing out in the cold and rain as it comes falling in,
no asking permissions, not so much as a second glance,
the river danced its fandango, raging through the culvert,
a concrete channel that’s supposed to keep it at bay,
built to get it away, to down there, anywhere, but not here.
…
And so we turned our back on the river and forgot,
the old tyrant that once ruled the valley when winter came
I think calling a…
Please add me Muhammad - so many books that have inspired me over the years.
…
On the ferry,
I liked sitting
on the edge,
looking down,
through dead water*.
…
I was returning
to a place
that was
and was not
my home.
…
I had never
been away,
returning
on the ferry,
looking down.
…
The River Suirs’
waters swirling,
muddy grey,
where it meets
the sea.
…
In the morning,
waiting, waiting.
Nearer now
to the quay,
where he’d be waiting,
with the brake
and horses,
a pair in hand.
…
Home again.
…
Looking down through dead water.
…
©robcullen06032021
…
…
There is a photograph taken at People’s Park,
my mother, father and sister,
standing in front of the open gates,
I am a child in my mother’s arms.
…
An uncle had died of TB,
a particularly virulent strain,
his brother he’d infected was in Dublin,
in a TB ward never to return.
…
His brother had come home,
when the war was done,
his lungs carried the strain,
one brother infected by his brother.
…
There was no freedom here,
a grandmother of one faith,
married to a grandfather,
of the state recognised religion.
…
But the freedom…
Rob Cullen
Rob Cullen artist, writer, poet. Rob runs “Voices on the Bridge” a poetry initiative in Wales. Walks hills and mountains daily with a sheep dog at his side.
