Poems By Gill McEvoy

For Finbar, in Memoriam.

The stars here are like apples
Crowding the tree.
You could have picked them one by one,
Kept them in the pocket
Closest to your heart.

But it is I who watch the stars,
I, who cannot name them as you did.
The pockets of my heart are filled
With holes, not stars, the bright apples
Always out of reach.

Badger

There you were, late evenings, you hissing, bristling

grisly old sorehead, making me sidestep

on the woodland path that leads to home,

your unstrokable fur raised like masts

flying warning flags. You pirate of my dustbins,

you scavenger of my garden bulbs and roots,

you nuisance old, grumpy old, Man of the Woods,

there you always were. Not as now, folded over,

humped inert at the roadside and I crouching by

the open door of my car, weeping and begging

forgiveness, and you lying there dumb.

(publishd Envoi, 2003)

The Power of Three.

For three months all she

dreamed about was you:

she named your name,

practised saying it

over again,

papered rooms,

sewed bright quilts,

painted rainbows,

just for you.

All you came to was

three dark stains

on the bed-sheets:

three black Furies

trumpeting

another death.