Poetry

Aimless

That earth beneath my feet again,
Wandering aimless along paths long worn,

Shadows of memory flicker in the shafts of autumn sun,

They break my heart, yet drive me on.

Our garden, that Eden, 

It has lost the romance that was once redolent in its scent,

When adventure filled my lungs with every cedar breath.

And I thought we would conquer the globe, footprints impressed in lands of dreams,

Lands we never got to share.

And yet, you were there today, a shadow of your laugh carried in the whispering murmurs of retreating ash, 

Your voice the gentle rustle spilling over the top of the hill.

(c) S. Duffy 2015

Tip the Can

The children play hide and seek on my street,

I look down from my window.

Cigarette pursed between my lips

My father’s music filling the room behind me.

I smile, glad for their innocence.

Happy that they are out and about

Where only patches of cobble peep out from

Beneath the gaudy tarmac that smothers our crumbling street.

Phones, consoles, TV, not needed now.

Their lungs are filled with the cold air

Of a spring night as they run and whoop and scream and shout.

Lost in the importance of play.

Yesterday is a memory, tomorrow is a dream.

I give a hint to the seeker while the hiders hold breath,

Squeezed behind lampposts, cars, the kerb.

The outcome of the game is all that matters to them.

Here. Now.  There is no concern for what lies below the horizon.

Happiness wrestles envy.

Eternal, constant battle.

Play on while I dream.  Play on.

Indulge me my memories of youth.

November Morning, Dublin

Granite cobbles slick with grime and grease.
Worn smooth by centuries of the passing masses.
Stacked staggered, haphazard.
They slacken our pace as we pass.
The morning song struggles, choked by the fog and fumes in a watery sky.
It echoes sharp across the still surface of the Liffey as she passes slow,
No hurry yet to greet the sea.
She is far from the green hills of her youth as she wends her way in silence
Among a labyrinth of crumbling red brick,
Tarnished with the soot of commerce And the bile of industry.

The people scurry, eyes to the ground,
Dodging their ways along the pavements, the crossings and the bridges.
A city of a million souls and not one yet connected.
The monotonous clack of steel wheel on track as the railway ferries countless more from hinter to heartland,
Their spines bent deep against the weight of life,
Their hearts turned inwards from reality.
(C) Copyright
Stephen A. Duffy – 2015

Stolen Day

That light will never shine again.

Not those beams from that fleeting instant.

The breath of that breeze has long since passed.

Inhaled, exhaled.

Taking a part of the soul, taking the memory.

A lost and stolen day

Burned white by the heat of a faded sun.

Smothered beneath the weight of eternity.

© Copyright Stephen Duffy 2015

Puddled Pavement

It is just a puddled pavement,

Trammelled, beat and pummelled.

A thousand footsteps, hapless in direction

Aimless in their course.

And yet, there was a life lived there.

It is just a puddled pavement,

But adventure played out there.

First steps fell, echoing now only in memory.

Grainy scenes bleached into time,

Their story bleeds like the ink on wet,

Discarded newspapers.

Scuffed and torn by the mindless traipse of soles.

It is just a puddled pavement,

But it was once so much more.

Life played out there.

© Stephen Duffy 2015

Inconceivable Immensity

Claw at the air as I might,

There is no tearing that fabric,

No stepping back into yesterday.

A sun like an old penny in rusty water

Faintly illuminates those fading times.

Autumn leaves blow by

Scattering across the pavement

Like the tattered confetti of summer.

At night a moon beam falls on me,

My umbilical to the cosmos

To where the past still lives, somewhere,

Lost in inconceivable immensity.

© S. Duffy 2015