Boyne Writers Group

The third issue of the Boyne Berries magazine was officially launched by the Chairman of Trim Town Council, Mr Ray Butler, in the Castle Arch Hotel, Summerhill Road, Trim on 10 April 2008.

Samples from Boyne Berries 3

Feeding the Calves

I have my yellow boots on to walk
beside your greater, green ones.
Our feet squidge, splodge across
the mud mouth of the shed gate
where the calves tread their own muck
and the straw into an earthen brown
pocked with their cloven prints.
Even the rain has given up this winter,
the insistent chill invading my red anorak.
We have wind from the North, you mutter.
That means snow and more blessed
misery. You pour the calf nuts into the clang
of the metal feeder. The smell of warm tea
oozes as their breath steaming, and the calves
nudge their heads through the bars,
warm in themselves.

Barbara Smith

A Question

What does 'Spargel' mean, asks
my fourteen year old niece,
studying for the Junior Cert and mindful
of difficult words, labelled 'linguistic',
which almost scared the pluperfect out of her.
God, do I know this one.
In a kiosk (no mobiles then) in Hamburg, raw as any
twenty-four year old can be, I say, stupidly, I'm here
with work, maybe we can meet.
Ich werde hier bekocht*, he says: Spargel.
Asparagus, sweetheart, masculine.

Ich werde hier bekocht* : somebody's cooking for me.

Anne O'Connor

Studio
For Geordie

It draws the breath
this room I know. The gloriousness of it,
the ragged reek of Linseed oil and must.

Sculpted walls that shout and tout rose,
ruddiness, ochre and rust: framed cacophonies
of tone and tincture, stirred empyrean.

The palette, riotous in mute amalgam
of tinge, hue and scumble
with brushes, knives and spatula remains

unmoved. Easel and stool stand humbled,
waiting, still, but speaking in still life.
Drawers, benches, boards and canvass flow

with pieces started, works unfinished,
some done, some doodled, others not begun:
a life in pictures, lived, unlived yet eager

in vignette. Your Cows at Pasture, brushed
so mellow allows the poet Ledwidge
might lament instead, for you - and so

dreams, hopes, desires and memories lie
open to imagination; to the eye.
And in this galleried sanctuary

where love sounds from every tint
and etching; fury and cold passion is
pronounced from your sketched glottis.

Brendan Carey Kinane

The Darkness and One

One, within the darkness,
Depthless, timeless, late,
A void between the ethers,
Out of life, out of space.

But lo! Motion . . . something there!
A ripple carries on the air,
The black abyss begins to scream,
As light invades its shadow seams.

Then there amid a blazing sea,
A mirage or a memory?
A dazzling form in robes of gold,
Her ruby smile, so bright and bold.

Her diamond eyes, so dead and cold

The peaceful black broken,
The oily shroud torn,
Anathema token,
From light and life thrown.

A blinding flash, then the image retreats
Back to beneath the ebony sheets.
The silence unbroken, the memory gone,
Calm in the darkness, the darkness and one.

Rory O'Sullivan