From The Language of Place

A Nation’s Pulse

Not stadium.
Ditch,
stone wall,
a square of grass,
an empty street.

Each game is memory,
generations 
in a single pass:
a ball flighted through dusk,
like a flare against forgetting.

Games not yet played
echo in our songs,
and the silence of church bells.

Ash strikes ash,
a thunder older than empires.
Leather lifts skyward,
a small epic,
retold with local colour.

Croker holds its noise and history
but glory is each games echo 
carried in our neighbour’s voice.
A timeless beat
a nation’s pulse.

Not sport,
but the language of place
spoken in dirt,
answered in myth.

A Schmozzle in the Parallelogram

Oh, the lift of it,
the sudden, soaring joy:
a group of lads,
in perfect, wordless harmony,
stage a small opera
of push and shove.

A harmless rapture,
a muddle of mirth,
the kind of brawl
that makes no enemies,
only participants,
swept up together
in the same bright foolishness.

Jerseys flap like banners,
boots scatter divots
like confetti,
and the crowd erupts,
not in outrage,
but delighted recognition:
ah yes, here we go again.

No malice,
just the glorious release
of being young,
alive on summer grass,
full of thunder
with nowhere in particular
to send it.

And, over the mayhem,
O’Hehir, smiling in his voice,
christens the carnival
with that perfect blessing:
A schmozzle in the parallelogram!

And the whole place cheers,
for the players,
for the sacred mess of it,
and the shining truth
that nobody really minds.

From The Drift of Memory

Memory Map

This was the first shape -
a rain-washed corner of the world,
where the streets ran close
and her mother’s voice
was the thread of morning.

She was five
when they packed the house into boxes
and left,
but the rhythm stayed,
turf smoke, church bells,
the scrape of school shoes on stone.

The city came like breath:
faster, louder, freer.
A gang of sisters
clattering through laneways,
skirts catching the wind
like sails.

She was the one they warned about:
the ringleader,
who’d climb the trees,
and hand out dares,
cycle to dancehalls after dark,
and stay ’til the lamplight dimmed.

O’Connell Street,
tea in Bewley’s,
hand-me-down coats and giggles
in smoky cinemas.

A city stretched between
Mass and mischief,
between duty
and the daring not to care.

Those streets etched her
long before love,
before loss,
before the quiet weight of everything after.
 

Get In There, Pauline

You filled the house with song,
a soft rebellion against the world’s weight,
each note a step forward
on lino floors worn smooth
by care and time and tiny feet.

You made light from little,
a smile always ready,
even when the nights stretched long
and grief clung like steam to windows.

Six of us,
but it was your voice that made us whole,
your laughter
turning laundry lines
into prayer flags in the wind.

"Get in there, Pauline!" you'd grin,
when something went right,
small triumphs turned into joy
by the way you claimed them.

And we did,
because you did.

Now, when silence settles,
I hear the hum,
your voice low with longing,
Bheir me ó,
as if already stepping through
to where he waited.

You knew.
You smiled.
And we carry it still,
in the songs,
in the strength,
in the getting on with it.

From Not Yet Ash

Lillie 
Your Beautiful Life?

The fire wouldn’t light that morning:
smoke curled into the room,
refused to rise.

They carried you like a burden
no one dared to name.
No last words. No glance.
Only the shuffle of tired boots
and one man watching
a wall turn red.

I kept your letters
with dust in creases,
your hand was steady,
always.

Others claimed you.
Recited you in chambers
where no cleaner earns a living wage.
Raised glasses to your name
with wine you never tasted.

You were never theirs to own.
Not flag.
Not state.
Not the party men
with soft hands and slogans.

You belong to
the dream not yet diminished,
to bread shared fairly,
to work that holds its dignity,
to shelter without shame.
To the quiet defiance
of those who still believe
life can be better
than this.

And to us,
the ones who know
your words were fire
and are not yet ash.

Joseph Mallin
Prayer for a father I do not remember

I was told you held me once,
in Kilmainham,
the night before they took you.

That I reached for your beard.
That I smiled.
I don’t remember.
But let that be true.

You were the quiet one.
The gentle one.
They say that, too.

Let it be true
that you kept birds,
played the flute
when the house grew still,
spoke softly,
and not just in court.

You were called a rebel.
A leader.
A martyr.

But I call you
the man who left Mam
with five names
and not enough hands.

Forgive me.
I tried to follow your silence.
I wore the collar,
walked the long hallways,
listened for your voice
in psalm echoes.
It never came.

You are a symbol now,
a mural,
a line in a schoolbook.
You belong to Ireland.

But I,
I am only your son.

I light candles,
not for the hero,
but for the father
who never tucked me in.

Let that be prayer enough.

From In The Quiet Light

The Weight of Expectation

At first, there was silence,
a pause heavy with unspoken words,
as if the world shifted
and left them behind.

They had dreamed me whole,
wrapped me in futures
before they even knew my name,
and then, the ground beneath them crumbled.

They thought they had been cheated,
as if life had drawn a veil
over the bright path they’d imagined.

But slowly, like dawn unfolding,
their gaze softened,
and in my life, they found light
not dimmed, but different.

The love they carried was not the love they thought
they’d give,
it was deeper,
richer for the gaps that let it grow.

And in time, they saw something
no loss could touch;
a joy that filled the spaces
they had once feared were empty.

Person-Centred

Of course, I’m at the centre,
on the form it says so,
neatly filed and signed,
each box ticked and checked.

Eligibility confirmed,
capacity assessed,
all in my best interests, naturally,
a drop-down list confirms
my ‘individual needs.’

They’ve thought of everything,
all my ‘needs’ and ‘preferences.’
They know exactly who I am,
my life described,
in bullet points and margins.

And here I am,
so well defined,
wrapped in care,
each form a perfect fit.

They look so proud,
so certain,
so sure this is all for me.
I nod along
and play my part,
a person-centred star
in their well scripted show.

And I watch, amused,
as they congratulate themselves,
how person-centred they must be,
for they’ve built a perfect world
to hold me, without ever
knowing me at all.