What is Poetry You Asked

for George

It is the red stiletto seen by you

and your friends when on a camping trip

from school. The one you described the day

we climbed Connemara’s Diamond Hill.

But it was also the black stone

of the mountain sparkling,

sandy boardwalks, boggy pools,

the Tír-na-nÓg-like view

of Innishark and Innisturk,

girl on her father's shoulders sailing

in the blue sky, you, and my daughter

continuing to the summit while I

head back down past brittle tufts,

parched stone, wind-whipped heather.

Below, it is the bronze sculpture

beside the altar in the chapel,

in memory of forsaken boys,

rows of heart-shaped headstones

in the graveyard, brazen cheek of daffodils.

It is cheese and salad sandwiches

devoured in the sunny courtyard,

crunch and slurp of Pink Lady apples,

nerve a-jitter at the corner of an eye,

monstrous cloud, a shiver in the sudden shade.

It is your question, my vague answer.

It is a joke, a joy, the cloud

imprinting on the mountain,

scrunched-up paper sandwich bags,

browning apple cores. And it is definitely

four schoolboys looking into a field,

at an abandoned red stiletto

their shared unspoken What the fuck?