Selected Poems by Ciaran McDermott

What the Trees Say at Dawn

One
dusky
moon-honeyed glissando
threaded through thorned ribcage
fluxed mosaic of sustained blossom
refracted in delicate chords of light probing
umbra of submarine rasp grasping for a response
greeting
sharpened
by
urgency
a
re
member
ing
that
loops
like
the
cycles
of
sea
waves
returning
reforged
again
dispersed
through
a
chorus of frequency that swells to blanket the world
ephemeral energy running fugitive
from the root of things.

Morrigu Smiles

Hovering
over the black star of her shadow
the silk-mad artist hangs
the delicate cage of her legs
from an orbed-web-mandala-core
cratered like the moon’s face, architect
of transformations, sculpting
exquisite waxwork statues
from the hollowed-out thoraxes
of bluebottles, eight serpents
coiling individually yet together
in response to a far-off tremor sensed
in the invisible medium, clambering drunkenly
out from the corner of the living room ceiling, pivoting
on the spool
of her splayed matchstick limbs, to descend
a staircase of air, reforming
on each step
as she dangles from the thread
that stitches the entire universe together, into
a crumpled leaf drifting, now
a brown-mouthed lily bud yawning open, a present
bound by black bow-tie ribbon, a harnessed
mountaineer lowering inch by inch
into the crystal-lit heart of the earth, a sleek
spiral of exoskeleton
that widens into a tumbled nest of skull,
its wickerwork grin eyeless.