James Mills

Some remnant living in muscle memory
is pressed, dressed and polished each time
he marches, slowly now and with tired bones,
to the Legion for his Friday bingo.
...

I spent last night in my valley.
Green and peaceful, it is.
Slow wagons of unburdened past
creak slow down berry-bright lanes.
...

There's a blue harmony to Summer rain,
Its subtle rhythm suits the mood I'm in,
A pulsing tempo, a liquid refrain
...

A slope of rising road
gains on the pair of us -
forcing silence.
Dusty birds and drunken bees
...

Along about now
old Day pulls the covers up
and whispers night-night.
...

We take slow trains to London moving clack-
clack past back door and yards sculpted in junk
with treasure troves of things they thought they loved;
sheds and beds and secret hiding places,
...

A zillion miles of night
caress the little star.
One amongst countless
it shines, knowing only itself,
...

Visiting you, weeks into your illness,
I almost passed your bed
so unlike yourself you had become.
You saw me, but propriety
...

Bar-room murmurs a dripping beat,
loud with sounding brass
and heavy metal thunder.
...

Out of what has gone before
We hang by threads of destiny;
Too late to change or to restore?
...

Embedded in a crumbling boulder
or sniffed as air released from some
mouldy cellar; that's how he
wished to arrive in the conscious
...

The poignant smell of whin blossom
mixed with turf smoke and Atlantic ozone.
We picked our way down a bouldered lane
onto a crunching Mayo beach
...

Who folded my map
before I'd even taken bearings?

I've tramped roads just
...

Last night, hunting inspiration,
I turned again to Mr Heaney.
Sometimes just one word
of his is enough to
...

Ground deep in cold, cold stone, CASSIDY,
chiselled long ago by craftman's hand
on a Celtic Cross.
Slowly a finger traces each etched letter,
...

A Sunday night, Nineteen Forty.
Holy - unholy congregate
at the four ways,
Just to foot the night,
...

Tethered to a stump of memory
a Wish lies bleaching in white isolation.
Dream winds worry its fading outline,
cracked lights shine on it - sometimes.
...

No tabloids for him, always The Irish News,
and that, mainly for deaths at the end.
Four slow reads he managed every day;
morning, after meals and just before bed,
...

Cane straight at eighty.
Years yet to dig
your careful bean rows.
To plant seed
...

Voices of our sullen North
waylay the splendid lyrics
he breathed on sibilant airwaves.
...