DENNIS MORIARTY

DENNIS MORIARTY.

The Major General

The major general was an ageing stalwart of empire.

Swaggering over the battlefields of inner-city slums,

Scattering mothers and their children

Into small heaps on the sides of pavements,

The collateral damage of his daily dalliances behind

Enemy lines.

Aloof and privileged, arrogant and angry, he accepted

Passing acknowledgements

With a disdainful sneer and a bark that lingered

Long after the echo had faded.

And at 9 am each morning, the pavements cleared,

Battle fatigued and wheezing,

He would stop outside our door to gather his breath

And lift his leg.

And always I went outside to greet him thus,

“Good morning Major general, how are you today?”

And always he would answer by showing me

The arsenal of his anger,

Yellow teeth and parade ground snarl that sent me

Scurrying back the way I had come.

His master’s voice behind me loud but oddly soothing,

“Come along Major general, there’s a good chap,

The gin and tonic is waiting!”

The Healing Process

The pond is a tin can prised open,

The surface of it’s contents a grey sheen

Of pre-sunset sky

And the fleshless limbs of wasted trees.

And just below that unruffled surface

Carp are entering the vacant spaces left behind

By the invasive pursuits of summer past,

Each one a monochrome

Reflection of another one’s suffering.

Dressed in the scars of line and hook

They drift in winter stupor through that twilight,

Mesmerized and soothed

By the gentle sound of a soft breeze singing

A flute of sunset water,

The healing process re imagined.

Camp Fire Canine Dreaming

Smokey moonlight, opulent sky, a camp fire,

The dog snoring loudly,

A roughly stitched hessian sack

Of noise.

Her tail rises slowly, falls again quickly, a single

Thump of bone on frosty ground.

Sighs, murmurs soft as a baby dreaming

Of the breast,

The hint of more substantial sounds

To come.

Grunts, rolling over, splashing through

A puddle of moonlight,

Stretches, a low growl scraping the back

Of her throat,

Twitches, twitches, twitching ever more violently,

Her body squeezed between spasms,

Until, with a single blunt bark,

Like a blind untethered, her eyes snap open.

A shadow crosses the moon,

Flames dance and the wood crackles

In the star lit hearth.

Song Of The Soil

Shrugging off sleep it emerges from mid winter slumber

Coughing, opening it’s eyes

Illuminating the grey heavy gloomy afternoon.

Staggers, stumbles,

Lurching from side to side clinging precariously

To the green brown slab of hillside

Emitting a low throttle throb of anxiety.

Finding firmer ground it sets it’s all weather, all terrain

Boots on greener turf,

Shoulders back, eyes front it strides out across

The hillside pasture

Singing in the slightly rasping, slightly breathless

Voice of a smoker,

The song reassuringly organic, overwhelmingly rural.

From the road below

We watch it’s red relentless approach as it consumes

The distance between us.

Silent, still as two wild animals caught in the glare

Of the approaching headlights,

The past, our future, the present morphing into one

Single blurred existence

That sees us free falling through the hypnotic regression

Of a tractor’s song.

DENNIS MORIARTY