photo: erik richardson

Heaney Whispers

by Erik Richardson

Sitting in the Dublin airport where runways left

a surgical scar in the midst of green-bellied fields

the country stares at me through Heaney’s eyes

through time. His picture whispers from the terminal wall

of railway children and telegraph wires

slightly out of place here. The whispers

move on through, me waiting like others before for a plane

with scalpel wings to sever me, history.

As the wings slice, peat-black shadows

bleed out to pool under me under crumbled ruins

unhealed and held in place

by rain and dark, by vigilant sheep, tangled

with winding roads

themselves cut through time

through the midst of green-bellied fields

~ originally published in Chiron Review

Existential Eclipse

photoart: ralph murre

Existential Eclipse

by Erik Richardson

Your mother lived

in the shadow of unraveling

unbeing

they cut it out, the absurd,

except for the fear,  

and it spread to her children

darkening all their days

while they pretended

their small talk candles

could light the way.

Your father died

four years gone

blown out with the last hot breath

of late summer wind

unreal

now the hole in your family

can at least scab over at last

dying was the only thing

he ever saw through to its end.

one day you see the lie

has grown, swallowed sunlight.

In some possible worlds

the test comes out o.k.

untrue

even in those, in yours,

all meaning is being erased

and you don’t know how

to teach your wife or daughter

to hold back the eclipsing dark

with lighted, wax-dipped talk.

~ first published in Sein und Werden

photoart: ralph murre

if god were an impressionist

     by Erik Richardson

 

if an impressionist had designed the world

there would be no edges sharp enough to cut

and letters and books would be far too blurry to read.

water would be made of blue and white cobblestones,  

of course. our hair would look like bird nests

as the fun-house mirrors would never show true.

there would be no rainforests or deserts

only lilypad ponds, and manicured parks, 

and fields of poppies or wheat spreading to the edges.

everyone would live near the bumpy water,

like the sea coast and the river’s edge,

riddled with sailboats or steamships or both.

and what night sky fireworks there would be

with every planet and orange-white-hurricane star

twisting and twirling the dark around it

while all along the street, smudged ballerinas

would sit in sidewalk cafes with gray-bearded men

with umbrellas and top hats, murmuring in french.

~ first published in Stoneboat