Richard J.P. O'Grady

Little hedge sparrow.
Who would have thought
you would be s o- o o o
sexy!
...

Barbless hooks,
how easily
words trip off the tongue.
...

Cruelly I cast my hook
into the cavern gaping
whilst overhead in bobbing boat,
impatiently I'm waiting.
...

Mousa Broch, mystery,
timelessness menace.
High in the Shetlands,
not German, not African.
...

Baleful eyes flaring,
glaring, staring,
squaring up tups.
...

Calcium carbonate in the water
Casts clouds across brown eyes
Which gaze at me, with far off air
Not sorrowful, soon not there.
...

Inspired by the funeral of Sir Norman Buchan MP

I do not want him there
or him, him or him.
...

Pulsing, breathless, circular rainbow
suspended below me, ebbing, flowing,
my sketch entitles 'Mine eyes have seen....'
...

As an employer, I should know
what BSE can do.
I believe the risks of handling meat,
the splinters and the spume
...

A flock of crows,
the corpse was bleeding freely,
crimson, russet, crimson, black
shiny road.
...

'The Darkling Thrush', from Hardy's poem,
floats up, tormenting, in my mind.

My own thrush sings from early on,
...

' Arrrrg ',
spanning twelve centuries
the growl of a camel.
Whose tomb so important
...

Wide-eyed, my little son
will not pass the humpy,
cobbled bridge, without a point
an exclamation.
...

When two Roe deer
form a pair, I wonder
if each thinks
the other, say more
...

History remembers the Nez Perce.
Pursued through four States, along Lolo Trail.
Amidst frozen Rockies, Bitter Root and Bear Paw,
Chief Joseph falls - silence, snow speckled, smothers.
...

'Acclaimed from youth our Han Kan stands alone,
Exhausting every feature of the horse.
Alas- he paints the flesh and not the bone;
Such splendid beasts, but winded soon of course! '
...