All That is Given
All That is Given

Hard wind on the turn at Cappaghmore.
You drive on, on the cusp of light,
along the old road past Mortyclough.
To think it’s taken me a lifetime
to cool my heels and lay the specious dream
spun through nameless cities, cold lakes,
and dark bodies nullifying loss.
Life lost to evasions and abstractions,
to poisons and residua.

It is daylight on the Western Shore
the cold tide on the turn.
What remains of what was lived?
A torn bird on bleak grass,
a hand laid upon a wound,
lives taken, or granted some reprieve.
Did I touch my bleeding head on the 14th floor,
hear someone allude to sickness,
glimpse the destiny that would unfold,
find a dogtooth in the urinal – the blood still fresh,
feel the warmth of a dead man’s hand in mine?

Who walks with me now on the edge of daylight?
The same that walked with Crean
on the down slope of South Georgia.
we walk differently in darker times,
touch loved faces with a different grace,
knowing someone or something
walks the complex water beside us,
doubted entities, life-stalkers on the salt edge waiting,
the thread between us drawn like spittle.
Generations read through constant mirrors,
veined opaque dreams,
convex pans across realities,
presences withering into wind calls,
life encoded in fragments,
the membrane fingered, dimpled, punctured,
gasping for the first breath and the last,
the truth……the truth being
merely a breath away from everyone.

Frank Golden

Frank Golden is a Clare-based poet, novelist, and screenwriter. He has published five books of poems, the most recent of which was gotta get a message to you(Salmon Publications 2017) “This is a poet to get excited about. Risk-taking…rhapsodic…elevated.” Afric McGlinchy/Southword. His novel, The Two Women of Aganatz(Wolfhound Press), was described by Carol Coulter in The Irish Times as “uncomfortable, but compellingly and poetically described by a powerful imagination”. Golden’s novel The Night Game (Salmon Publications) was described by Declan Burke/The Irish Examiner as, “A challenging, transgressive, and gripping read.”

He has received bursaries and awards from the Irish Film Board, Clare County Council, and the Arts Council of Ireland. Frank Golden is Head of Creative Writing at the Burren College of Art.

www.frankgolden7.com

Ouevre

This Time

Poetry by Frank Golden

My father would come this time of year the hawthorn needled into flower the sycamore and elder in full leaf to relish a call that ravelled him back in time....
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Portrait

Poetry by Frank Golden

Oughtmama and the mists of late February fade Turlough Mountain and Moneen to a landscape of silhouettes in sheer cascade, only the immediate clear and nameable. I live here now...
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ST Colmans Well – Oughtmama

Poetry by Frank Golden

Is there a code of seeing what is or is not present? This tree by Colman’s well melted into its heartspace. This coil of life in its own soil, making...
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Anthology

Intervals

Poetry by Neha Kothari

My body is silent I feel it balancing tone And muting all conversation Of pain or fatigue Slowly the silence creeps into The space around me Where I catch it...
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The Grand Mystique

Poetry by Cheryl Cobern Browne

… A Visual Poetry…
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Morning Sunshine

Poetry by Sanaya

Morning sunshine hugs my bones Light that trickles in slowly And then drenches Alive, and hot But a love that melts in my mouth Tickles the tops of blades of...
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