Five Poems by PD Lyons

 

Lilacs Out the Windows of My Mother’s Room

 

Sometimes I’d lay across her empty bed

Tight white sheets

Bed spread folded down

 

Imagining things upon the ceiling

Letting sunlight play patterns behind my eyes

 

My arms stretch like wings

My legs as if I were a star

 

Seeing how deep my lungs could go

 

Returning but Not to Brooklyn Anymore

 

warm stones

cut before Norman times

silent witness now

her own alabaster hands.

 

friends of her parents

children of ghosts

funerals she herself was raised on.

Christmas outside midnight

tolling messages from her American children

repeated prayers of comfort and joy

 

mornings 

sat on the edge of her mother's bed

sometimes joined by the ginger cat

black sweet tea

steam between their matching hands

speak softly anyway

until the day brightens.

 

narrow village miles

crisp breath another stronger winter warning

sometimes she made the high hills

 

sometimes she'd imagine someone

not her children

not her husband

someone she had yet to meet.

together they could share a like

the language of these hills

harmonic sun light

pure deep water

cake black earth

cold dancing like needles across any skin

~

new year's day 

coffee not so bad

waiting for an early morning flight

 

by now the cat already fed

cattle already tended 

damp dogs anxious for their own

heap into the jeep 

around her mother’s feet

 

and

maybe this year

when she came back,

maybe this would be the year

returning but not to Brooklyn anymore. 

 

The Avalon Girl

 

Met the darker double born.

Held her heart out to the heat.

Cut the braid from her own uncut head,

Gifted to his reckless wild hands.

  

Soon carried on to summery lands.

First crossed wastelands of the East.

Met a man who brought her peace.

Golden daughters dakini schooled.

Then rested into holidays & grandchildren,

Feasts begun to cook the night before,

Full house wakes up to a heaven scent.

 

And of her torn heart, spoke to none.

And of heat, preferred now a cooler Colorado sun.

And of her gifted young girl braid,

Remembered keen how the stupid jerk misplaced it.

 

But whenever she saw black upon the green.

Whenever seven roses red appeared.

Whenever she saw the grey eyed sea.

No matter from which continent or shore -

Oh, she would lose a heartbeat or two

 And Avalon she would think of you.

 

From the House of Starlings

 

Didn’t we meet once?

Weren’t you the one?

Draped in skins

Morphine wings,

 

Wasn’t I the one?

Reminding you?

A choir of snow

A month of tears

 

Voices born in the open spaces of our hearts.

 

(For Elsa of River Glenn)

 

my favourite dreams are of the sea

the sky so bright it can’t be looked at

the water dark and deep

the sky bends down in envy

and I am alone in this wide-open ocean

absent from any shore line

knowing as I lie back she will not let me fall 

 

a child barefoot playing on the beach

sand castles built tall as my self

and now with my pail

make a way so mermaids who have been watching

can come up for a visit without leaving their home behind

 

my mother meets me by the creek once marked the boundary of our beach walks

we are walking back I am telling her everyone is doing pretty well.

she is pointing out to where diamonds of the waves briefly meet the sky

 

my cousins brother-in-law brings us to the breakwater to fish. I’ve smoked all my cigarettes and he, the brother-in-law, is generous supplying me from his own. They get bored want to go down to the beach side to swim. I don’t want to, So I stay smoking someone else’s cigarettes fishing for nothing keeping an eye on the gear. Nearby there’s woman on a huge flat chunk of granite. She has two children with her. They are playing together with bits of sea weed. She lays there luxuriant in the sun sounds of the waves and the laughter of her children.

 

walking on the beach with a girl I know from school. the tide high and slack.

we are finding things in the sand noting as we go strips of green weeds, bits of sea glass, bleached bones of small creatures skulls of small crabs. Sometimes there are these pink stones. I pick them up put them into the pockets of my cut-off jeans. She picks them up as well and even though she has pockets on her cut-offs she is rather throwing them out into the sea. I give it a go but mine fall short. They’re nowhere near the long effortless arcs of her own. So instead, I give all mine to her and watch. We continue on in that way. Me picking up small pink stones handing them to her so we can enjoy the long grace of her connections with the sea.

 

 

 

PD Lyons - Born and raised in the USA. Currently residing in Ireland. The work of pd Lyons has appeared in publications throughout the world.

Poetry collections published by Lapwing Press, Belfast. erbacce-Press, Liverpool.  Westmeath Arts Council Ireland.