Alnitak
Her brother had a deep interest in stars.
Alnitak Alnilam and Mintaka
The ones closest to the moon and closest emotionally
To the fragile earth. Injured to the same extent.
My brother meets her in Catherine St.
A river made of concrete below the cream clock.
On the roof of one of the oldest garages in Ireland.
In a few days my brother will have to stand before.
A Snellen Chart in a Shopping Centre. For distance glasses.
Overdue ones. So he doesn’t see her coming from Parnell St.
She explains that she would have written but her brother died.
And that he was brilliant. He shone like the stars he studied.
My brother will find it hard to get past the third line.
Many find the last line impossible even if they can see well.
Her brother could see Alnitak in close detail.
Nebulous but far from lonely. Brighter even than the sun.
He could see us in our battered and borrowed car
Waiting to cross the river. On our way to say goodbye
To a dead loved one. One hundred miles away. The bridge
Up because the ships must have got bigger over the centuries.
She said her brother could see anything and everything.
As the Athenians turned from yellow to white saving
The Spartans and shortening the war I turned the same
Sickly colour. Waiting for the bridge to lower its hands.
Looking at the creases in Mt. Misery. Wishing for two or
Three moments of brightness in the darkness that was to come.
All those miles to try to find the extent of another person’s
Loneliness. It’s difficult. And then you have to come back.
Many suffer from the same kind of travel sickness I do.
Don’t worry a toothless aunt says trying to reassure me
We’re nearly there. And we had only just started.
We move off from one side of the river to the other.
Things don’t get any better. The orange lights outside
Almost make the nausea worse. So I look at the stars instead
But that doesn’t work. Try sucking a sweet my aunt says.
The Ash Stairs
In a time of mahogany when everything that wasn’t mahogany
Was made the colour of mahogany and dark mahogany at that
There was the ash stairs and my father carrying Sammy down.
And I’m there wondering Is Sammy coming yet?
The steps you see and the ones you never do. Towards the end.
Down the ash stairs with Sammy wrapped up.
The descent into legend. Your legends and mine.
Even harder to see when you can’t see where you’re going.
Poor Sammy was dead and had to be brought from the attic
In a sack. He wouldn’t have been happy here
His reconciled but inconsolable owner says out loud
As the corner of Sammy’s sack begins to appear.
He had been pink at one stage. From Camomile lotion.
It is very messy stuff. The embarrassed owner could hear
The voices of children from the Yellow Road shouting over
Look at the lady with the pink dog. So she hurried past.
But he was white and all fluff. Even in this state.
Silent as snowfall falling into my father’s sack
I was afraid to look and I didn’t look years later when the stairs
Was taken down step- by-step tinged with the same pinkness.
Ray Carey is an Irish poet and composer. He was selected by the Irish Poet Laureate Paul Durcan from a National Competition for his Trinity Workshop Poets. He has composed adaptions of Boucicault and Wilde for the Dublin County Arts Festival. A recent work- Iphigenia- was selected by the poet Patrick Cotter for the current edition of Southword 47: New International Writing. He was born and lives in Waterford Ireland.