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On
Aran
by
Ger Killeen
It
seemed I walked all day
to find Mrs. Conneely's signless B&B,
arriving drenched and windburned
for scones and tea beside her fire.
There was a rightness in being
bone-weary for I'd been living
too much inside my head's abstract
allegiances to a few grains of light—
love, history, faith; names that needed
trying on my body's unappeasable ground.
And so I found myself turning
again out into the acid shove
of the world's weather, pushing myself
on to the edge of Dún Aonghusa's cliff. And
I remember asking myself what,
If I didn't stop, didn't stop, might be
redeemed by the stubborn act
of stepping onto the wind, no matter
what happened next, miracle
or not. But all I did
was ask, for which of us can love that
way, that much?
That night, asleep
under the rain-lashed skylight, I saw
a white stone fall out of the night.
I caught it, held it, cherished it,
And blackened it with my hands.
Weather
Signs
by
Ger Killeen
My
great-great grandfather,
my great-great grandmother,
stumbling out of their language, Irish,
along a famine road in Mayo: Oh,
how the meadowlarks came
falling out of the blue
black orbits of their own
songs and turned
to jagged stones
under bare feet. My
great grandfather blowing
onwards, my
great grandmother,
whose hearts should have been a vowel
in God's most lovely name: Oh,
how the mountain
ash flailed the red shreds
of its knowledge
against their pale faces. My
grandfather, my grandmother
circling and circling
a holy well long fled
into hiding: Oh,
how the sleek toads
howled and spat
into their weary sleep. My
father and mother
walking through the shining
streets of London, past
The Victoria
and Albert Museum: Oh,
how it was snowing
even inside their bones, oh,
how it was snowing
where I was
waiting to remember, oh,
how it was snowing
where I was
waiting to speak.
Ger
Killeen has published the following books: A Trace of Exaggeration
(Mc Kerns, 1985), Construction Ahead (Sparrow Press,
1989), A Wren (Bluestem Press, 1990), Lia A Léimfidh
Thar Tonnta: A Stone That Will Jump Over The Waves (Trask
House Books, 1999), Poetry collections. Anthologies: An
Cloigeann Is a Luach—A Head and Its Worth (Limerick
Co. Council, 1998), From Here We Speak (Oregon State
University Press, 1994), On The Counterscarp (Salmon
Publishing, 1991), American Poetry: The Next Generation
(Carnegie-Mellon University Press, February 2000 ), The
Great Blue Heron (Adrienne Lee Press, forthcoming). His
poetry and essays have appeared in the following magazines
and periodicals: American Poetry Review, New Irish
Writing, Cyphers, Hubbub, Fireweed,
Continental Drift, Oregon Coast Magazine, Inkslick,
Limerick Poetry Broadsheet, Tocsin, Portland
Magazine, and Glimmer Train. Ger Killeen was also
the Winner of the 1989 Bluestem Award for Poetry (a national
award) and was Nominated for the Oregon Book Award in 2000.
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