Frank Dullaghan

Frank is co-editor of the poetry magazine Seam (PO Box 3684, Danbury, Chelmsford CM3 4GP: submissions welcome, subscriptions even more so). His own poems have been published widely in magazines and he is currently working on a novel.

WAITING FOR HOOVES

I was ten when they thundered
themselves large,
from the gypsey encampment,
freezing me in the headlights of their eyes
as the great engines of their bodies
crashed through their gears
and their manes spumed out behind them.
They steamed between
front garden walls and parked cars.
I froze on their track, watching them grow
into clamorous magesty;
froze till some other part of my brain
clicked in, leapt me aside
to watch their high heads
race down the line of the hedge
from the station of a neighbour's garden.

Tonight the river is a steel rail
beneath a gunmetal sky.
The drum of my skin tenses waiting
for the next moment to slam into now,
for the hoof-hammer hit to catch the back of my eye
and explode down the rail,
gallop its iron through my head.
I want that rush of noise that I felt as a boy,
something to pick me up and fling me
from the worn path of myself
as the wind snorts and stamps
and the sky whinnies.

Ferryman

The ferry line swung its certainty over the river.
It was old, basic, the boat attached to the line by a loop
that the ferryman slipped along the line, pulled down on,

hauling us across, to sit in the sun with our pints.
Then, in that way that a crowd lifts its head, we looked up,
say a young man out on the line, crawling leg over leg

for a bet, slow as a snail, crossing back to the pier.
Half-way over his arms hung straight. We were sure he was gone.
But he stayed, hand-grab to hand-grab

on the long pull up from the centre to the other side.
Both banks broke into cheers and the ferryman jerked his boat
into movement, crossing over the water after him.

This is how it should be: surprising yourself, being able
to stand on the far shore with your arms crossed,
resting, taking the applause, waiting for the ferryman.

UNDER THE GREEN SKY

O come with me, she said, to Ireland,
under the green sky, under the green sun.
Come with me, she said, to Ireland,
where we can make-believe a home.

She drove me in her car through Kerry,
through the mountains to the Atlantic coast.
She drove me in her car through Kerry
and told me I must make the most

of the wind and the rain and her soft bed
before we ran out of time.
The wind and the rain and her soft bed
were never meant to stay mine.

For we just borrowed this time together,
under the green sky, under the green moon.
Just borrowed time together
before the shadow returned to its stone.

Other pages

Home

Directions

News

Ty Newydd photos

Other photos
Non-Ty Newydd- related photos

September 11 2001

Publications by graduates

Publications by tutors

Graduate and student work
Poems, stories etc by Masters graduates

Staff work

Academi Cardiff Poetry Competition

As Meat Loves Salt

Teaching a Chicken to Swim

Links
Links to useful sites