This Time
This Time

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.

It takes whole seasons to map a valley
to find a mushroom stone on a high bluff
to deepen the veined trace of rising tracks
to source the mill race on a vanished river.

It takes time for the weave of rustlings and calls
to engrain or simply settle, and for the body
to move as a common element,
to fold in with the daily course of light and rain.

Our instinct for home
our desire for the physic hill
or the ample body, or the absolute sky,
or the dawn song on the still crest,

the ordained moment
like finding the cuckoo’s call nesting in your hand,
or in the furlong field watching
the braiding course of a daylight fox.

It was always the cuckoo that he came to hear,
like a tailwind ride downhill
or seagulls in the wake of home bound boats,
there was a freedom in it, a tuning

to a world of constants, grassheads rising,
the long lane full of uncurling fern,
faith that the fact of their occurrence,
made plain the numinous chorus to his life.

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

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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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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Declension in April

Poetry by Frank Golden

Lacking an ordained task, I sit in the blue chair facing south, rain on the circular field past Ballyhaine, rifts of blue opened by the wind, a taper of baling...
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Anthology

Blues

Poetry by Neha Kothari

Were you looking for long? You can always find me Where? Oh you can find me where the blues meet. Look into the sifting clouds And follow their path You...
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Ink

Poetry by Simran

Speak, sing, write, act Till your voice can no more And your face can’t twitch a muscle And your hand cramps and becomes sore With blisters and splotches of ink...
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Still children seeking their way home

Poetry by Bettina

We are grown people we claim. To prove it our lips form a tight line, our faces show wrinkles which remind us of years of living, striving, surviving, crying after...
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