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

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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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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All That is Given

Poetry by Frank Golden

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...
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Anthology

Perhaps

Poetry by Arwa Qutbuddin

Perhaps we need to shatter and scatter so that we may trace our way back inward slowly – breath by breath – into the wholeness of existence And as we...
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What Trudy Knows

Poetry by Knute Skinner

I find myself mourning but not for anyone we have buried and not for the old neighbourhood or my lost youth or any of that crap. To make no bones...
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Deliverance Through Surrender

Poetry by Gaurav Mathur

Deliverance through surrender Order re-restored My true self is now in form Whole, wholesome, pure Unchanged, or rather back to the original form Self before me, before time Unchained, or...
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