Luke Whitington: Two Poems

Heaney’s wind

Stopped by the cliff edge

Standing close by the rocking car—

­Torrents of wind flowing and you catch

Still holding the freezing doorhandle—

A sudden blow of comfort …

You are reminded of Heaney

His slow stoic lines of verse

Driving those four muddy wheels further

Hunched in his cosy car island

Slowly following the cliff’s edge in County Clare.

His thoughts bucketing sideways

His heart buffeted suddenly upward

Like a kite twisting and turning in the sky—

­And you stand away from the shaking vehicle

Freed of the cold, chrome grip

Watching the glow of a sunset, a sinking golden wreckage

Your thoughts tugged closer to the cliff …

Standing away from the shuddering province of your car

Facing the light’s rush, while it floods into every crevice—

­Even your saddest secrets … sluggish in the leaps of light

And you suddenly grab for your hat, flown

Into the streams of light and emotion

A favourite old cap, gone with a gasp

Wrenched from somewhere in your guts, your wings

Of curses floating up too fast—

Flying beyond your stretched, transparent hands.

Towards another summer

There is a new-born calf lying dead by the yards

Its tongue taken at first light by a fox

A life swiped for a tongue, what an exchange—

­Need is swift and ruthless in nature.

In days then weeks which pass while September wind sways in the conifers The fallen shape is stripped down to sketched bones—

Life, like the maggots, feeds fervently from death to survive;

A year unravels its mosaics of circling patterns

New light and old darkness renewing

And retreating, editing a brace of seasons

Stepping forward and back—until it’s spring again

And as if nothing had happened—

And we see a crow perched for a wing-beating moment

On the coiled white ribs of last spring’s death—

The calf’s head pristine, cushioned by daisies

And a mound of clover; ants crawling through the eye sockets

Have carried away ten times their number and strength

And the mother has given birth to another calf

That bleats and butts and punishes up under her udder

Bellowing before it finally gets a grip on the teats

Tugs down and sucks for its right to life, under skies shifting

Constantly onwards, sailing toward more cathedrals of light—

And the only death of last spring is taken for granted

Blurred in a surge of luscious green growth, those slow pendulums of yellow While slants of summer fall, golden blessings across the emigration of grasses.

Luke Whitington