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Copyright
1995-2006
Darryl Riser
From Belfast
to Bourbon Street
I wrote this suite
of poems one gloomy afternoon while ruminating on a girl I used
to know and the causes we believed in.
The picture at the right was a early attempt to show that all oceans and sunsets are more or less the same. The scene could have come from Ireland or New Orleans ... but in reality I had Biloxi in mind at the time and a lone figure in exile thinking about home. It just seemed to go with the poems.
The girl's long since gone back to Ireland and I haven't been to Mass in a dozen years, but I still keep up with the Troubles via An Phoblact and some contacts with the Sinn Fein.
The cuckoo clock is hanging in my living room. I still haven't fixed it.
One
You said you'd come back
when Ireland was free again
and peace reigned in Belfast.
Victory seemed a step away
and I planned to greet you
with roses in the spring.
It's been 12 years, though,
and I don't suppose
I'll be seeing you again.
Two
It's raining in New Orleans,
or so the weatherman says,
and the closest I'll come to Dublin
is the digital camera of the Irish Times.
So many places I can never return
So many bridges meticulously burned.
You can't go home again because ...
well, you just can't and that's that.
Sometimes the simplest truths
are the hardest to understand.
Three
Flame red hair pooled liked blood
against the white satin of the sheets
and for a moment my heart stopped.
You awoke with a flash of green,
eyes dancing with mischief at dawn
fireflies trapped in an emerald glass.
We spent the day on the ocean,
beaneath a peaceful blue sky,
and I marveled as green salt water
became transparent on your skin.
My world was Vibrant
and I loved you for it.
Today, beaneath leaden skies,
I brood over this gray gulf
and wonder what went wrong.
Four
I spent my morning puttering about,
working the gears on an ancient
cuckoo clock I bought for $20
at an antique shop downtown.
No matter how hard I tried
I couldn't get the maiden to sing
and the grumpy old woodsman
only works at his crosscut saw
for a few painful moments
before falling silently into thought
as if brooding over a particularly
tough piece of knotty pine.
The bird comes out at times,
waggling his wooden tongue,
but remains strangely silent.
I suppose there isn't much
for a broken clock to sing about.
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