Le Cadeau d'Amour
There’s something that particularly touches me
about the way our friendship came to pass,
with unexpected serendipity
that guided us onto converging paths.
Yet it’s not fate alone that moves me thus,
however curious the happenstance,
but more profound occurrence leaving us
indebted to this life-affirming chance:
For we identify a shared belief--
that there is only love when all is done,
and frets material simply surcease,
dissolve to nought, when we become as one.
In universal harmony we sing
of how ‘le cadeau d’amour’ binds everything.
​
M McGann © 2022
CONCORDE
​
Strapped into tiny rocket seats, the famous
cheek-by-jowl with nameless others
- harmless tourists mostly,
families or career servants -
sit silently post argy-bargy hurrying,
some splurge savings others purge cravings
anticipating take-off of unmitigated force.
​
M McGann © 2022
A Realm Beyond
If I could have this life to live once more,
defy encroaching age and creeping time,
I’d once again call late upon your door
and leave admirers hanging on your line.
For nothing I have seen or can conceive
makes sense if not experienced with you,
identity and all that I believe,
revealed imposters lest you feel it too.
For you affect my days so far beyond
the singular perception of my youth,
enriching my life story with a tongue
that speaks of love, and ownership of truth.
Within a realm beyond just you and me
where two as one resides, entirely ‘we’.
​
© M McGann 2022
In Defence of Denialism
You’re here. I know. I sense it so it’s true.
My conviction is not craven like
the futility of fungi moth
knocked pillar-to-post by faulty navigation
duped by illusory light. It is not
a Promethean ruse to trick the Gods of Grief
and steal their licking flame,
you’re here, I sense it. I see you
in cumulonimbus on a menacing day,
puffing your cheeks in that impatient way of yours
as storm blows too squally for your stridency. I hear you
in crashing waves that hit the shore then retreat
sotto voce whispering ‘for evermore’,
it’s you. I can taste it
in my progressive penchant for the bitterest fruit
and sourly potent rhizome root, all yours,
until now. I feel it
in the creeping fear of mortality
and diminishing sensitivity as survival rises to apex
in my hierarchy of needs, it’s you. I smell it
and shrink from the astringency of sandalwood
still welcoming your best flat palm upon my brow
as I lie here awake, satisfied that I now know
why you never kissed me there instead.
​
M McGann © 2022
Meet Me...
Meet me in the silence between echoes,
where words that cost are all but spent
in stasis at the wave’s descent
before the cry for help becomes a bellow.
Meet me in the silence between echoes,
before a tweet becomes a ‘re-‘
and docile reductive clamouring
renews its oscillatory ‘me and we’.
Meet me in the space between the matter,
where we can witness our decaying
purpose as custodians
and start to save the planet from disaster.
Meet me in the ownership of cause and consequence,
the sickness wrought by mind’s disease,
starvation made by gluttony
and actions driven all by self-defence.
Meet me in that place where nothing happens,
where no one creed’s superior
or sex or skin inferior
and all of life is cherished in our hands.
Meet me at the border between nations,
where we relinquish arms of war
as nothing is worth fighting for
except a global communalisation.
Meet me at the dawning of acceptance,
where anger, blame and enmity
are quelled by our humility
and we are free to live and love and dance.
​
© Mark McGann 2022
Mersey Beat
Knees roughened by scrapes they tumble shouting
exultations in defence of nations,
one cries “Grenade!” they all hit the deck
then move on all fours, salamanders writhing,
surviving the fire, avoiding the sniping
that lurks concealed in ‘bombed-out’ carapaces
of derelict Liverpool houses--
a melee-Anges of legs and arms
in shorts too long, too low for decent purpose,
‘whoop’ and ‘ack-ack’ bellowing curses
to bandits who dive at twelve o’clock
then run for cover to rusty bedframe
that survives the blanket bombing, to provide
our ragged corps with Swiss-like neutrality
from all surrounding urban hostility
until the scene changes again--
now all at sea they man the capstan,
eight-year-old scally (the eldest and leader)
nominates the youngest (the smallest and cleanest)
to clear the dreaded barnacle-infested mattress-
with lolly-stick cutlasses drawn from their snake-belts
they circle the urchin, who whimpers refusals
and so he must walk the plank of rank
detritus and social neglect. He’s thrown to the deck--
then all plays-out in terrible slow-motion,
howls pierce the silence, leaving them frozen
in icy water now for sure
with their familial common-law. The infant rises
and from his eye, a grotesque defacement of youth:
a bedspring hanging like a shrapnel fruit
trumps the play-- aghast, mouths agape,
they gasp and scatter-off down the street and away.
With rooted protective reflex or fear
of reprisals for trouble on his watch,
the elder soldier lifts the callous coil
from sibling’s lower palpebra
and watches it drop to the bed with a thud--
“Can you see okay? Can you blink for me?”
The boy obeys, “It’s alright I think?”
then both laugh uncontrollably--
and make their way back down the street
brothers-in-arms, bond renewed at the front,
“Don’t tell me Dad or I’ll kill you” he says.
“I won’t, I won’t, I’m just glad I’m not dead.”
(palpebra – eyelid)
​
© Mark McGann 2022
Natural History
Hunched beneath the refuge
of a blood maroon jellaba,
a post-migratory Osprey contemplates-
the plunge as yet untaken.
She pecks and preens in silence
in the cage of her own making,
an eerie nest and ageing
sharpening talons on the grind.
Legs perched twitching
on coffee table edge,
pinioned by her flightless wings, restrained-
a game hen tethered
by ties that tightly bind,
wanting mouths to feed. Nothing
escapes her hawk-eyed vigilance,
percipience honed by plumose monogamy
danced to diurnal rhythms. Rapt or
captured now in darkness
by strobing TV screen, she flutters,
brittle and ossified. Diminished
by lighter markings, inferior stature,
her lifelong partner circles, wary
of her darker mask; his schemes
asynchronously hatched. Hovering
below, he bides his time
then glides up close to kiss her crown
to honour her and make her fly,
albeit with a frown.
© Mark McGann 2022
The Cost of Living
I looked for you this morning as I woke,
the desperate act of a severed, broken soul.
Your bowl was laid before awareness spoke
its bitter truth, so empty, so, so cold.
You’ve been my spirit’s daemon for so long
my beautiful boy. A preternatural bond,
our gift; a solace surely far too strong
to not cost now with you completely gone-
a disproportionate sorrow for one so small?
Too scant for a scamp that shaped these cradling arms
and now won’t come to heal my howling calls
as all in me resigns to nature’s harm?
The Gods took back their gift on Boxing Day,
he looked into my eyes, then flew away.
© Mark McGann 2022
A Sonnet Sequence
Single Vision
I see the twin that you deserve to know
mirrored as your companion in the glass,
both curiously absorbed in Easter’s show
of promise, sung above the woodland pass.
What is it you so keenly comprehend,
tails wagging, in tandem with the vernal view?
Is it far beyond where human sentience tends
in your olfactory miracle milieu?
You move, becoming singular once more,
the doppelgänger suddenly too diffuse
to reinforce your presence as before,
no longer tangible witness to your truth.
She’s gone. Leaving you a solitary piece
at once removed, as I from you by species.
​
​
My Guiding Spur
When pondering what it is you represent
to the unfolding story of my life,
I’m suddenly right back in those crucial scenes
that served to shift the narrative paradigm---
as bucking cubs, we tumbled, ran and played -
the hallmark of our forebears’ kith and kin -
as choristers we soared beyond the stave
to glimpse the heady heights from Mozart’s pen.
You were my guiding spur -- and when I fell,
your outstretched arm and over-shoulder glance
praised what I could not see within myself
and gave me hope I might perfect the dance.
By celebrating ours, and hours alone,
you led me to the path and brought me home.
​
​
Ever Present
I think you’ve always been there at my side,
even before the fates compelled us ‘meet!’
I see now you were with me when I cried
as worldly truth crashed through my infancy.
It was you I now accept, who gave me strength
as teenage isolation wracked my soul,
and you who sought confusion’s recompense
by guiding me to acceptance of the fold.
For everything I was or have become
is only now revealed when seen through ‘we’
and erstwhile firm belief in where I’m from
is but ephemeral passing history.
You’re in my every chapter, verse and rhyme
since life began, until the end of time.
​
© Mark McGann 2022
Walk on, walk on
Walk on walk on sweet mistress mine
our path is truly blessed
by all the souls who down the line
with love their lives attested,
they guide us now when doubt creeps near
and fortify our creed,
they reconcile all that we were
with what we now believe.
Can you not hear them laugh at us
when we forget ourselves?
Or see them smile at how we fuss
at trivial travails?
​
Our love by loving friends is forged,
with us they’re intertwined,
they carry us up to evermore
where all our love combines.
​
© Mark McGann 2022
Haikus
autumnal colours,
melancholic wistfulness
life diminishing.
Chattering sparrows
flicker deep within the fir tree -
synapses firing.
familiar faces
peer from frames upon the wall,
here but never here.
suddenly silence
the sparrow-hawk locks on prey
life as recycling.
Serene, placid lake,
reflective captured moment
worlds above – below.