Oisín Breen

Grain cut, to keep lolling heads fresh for threshing,

Wheat, barley, and oats.

And I came here to rest,

Having left the manicured gardens,

Where I served my apprenticeship.

And I am here before the machines,

And their hunger,

Separating seed from stalk and husk.

I apprenticed – often weeping – under a damson tree,

And felt, each day, the morning,

As it broke into being in fitful tremors.

And now I kneel,

And though the soil is summer dry,

I am drinking river blood.

I came here to remember, but am unreconciled.

I am unrepentant, and find kinship only among the dead,

Among wheat, barley, and oats.

And today I spit memories of time-lambasted song,

And I howl at time, and its goliath, mesmeric faith,

Here, near the roadside, where labourers till the land.

Where a fractalizing floral pattern

Bursts from the thorns

I surround myself with

To count time’s rustling movement

In the leaping unsteady growth

Of pink cactus buds.

Yet I can not fault the juniper tree,

Growing at a 90 degree angle,

A mile from my home,

It huddles, like a group of children,

And reaches out to hold the sun between its stubby fingers,

All the while issuing its lazy collection of soft blue fruit,

Which I gather to make gin.

Yet I have built my survival on tin,

And I leer at the open space

It promises through its absence

And I dream of tin forests.

I dream of tin children, and tin fruit.

I dream of tin palaces, tin holidays, and tin skies.

And I fear the harsh judgement of the woods.