Greasy Fall Leaves, Part 1 Poem by Kevin John Mangan

A day to thin to raise the shades in Carrickfergus
we couldn't see the days for years in that hunching obtuse thing
pound for pound it inched rookward
from the black sea smear the low tide laid bare.

Walking in a cold theatre,
stone courts where cartoon soldiers toil
and placid archers aim to sea;
there a hard tunneled staircase
found an imagined nobles feast
and on a Carrollian chessboard we readied
our cavalry, a game told later free of Gaelic ruins.

There was no higher in the place to wince
at the autumn wind or fall to wide green water;
I thought like the song
'would I make a handsome boatsman
or could I drown us both';
ah a giants leap from this causeway
is all to smash my face.