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Sun Set Sun Day
Happy Summer!
Though I’m Irish, and for me Summer started in May, making this MidSummer’s Day, logically, it seems that the astronomers around me disagree. Whatever.
Here’s a short poem I thought of a couple of Sundays ago, to make you think of the joy of these short nights.
Sunday Sunset
Other days we rush inside
From the porch, to prepare
Dinner, drinks and sit upon
Sofa to see a movie or TV; or
Drive to the city for dusk, but
.
Sunday is when we want to stay
Watching sunset and slipping
Off to bed when the bats and
Owls calling have taken over
From twilight blackbirds and
Nightingales, the last rays of
Sun replaced by moonbeams,
The gleam of glow worms when
Cicadas are silent to let crickets
Sing, as peace settles like aspen
Cotton in the stillness between
Breezes. Then sleep suggests itself
Until we rise again to catch the dawn.
Passing in the Night
So despite our quarantine, and shut bars etc., we can at least leave our homes so far during this second wave, and that’s a lot. A walk, a stroll, a chance to stand and smell fresh air (when you can lower the mask, of course) to stare up at the sky and relax your eyes, is not to be dismissed anymore.
And it’s a delight to know the natural world is still spinning on despite our stupidity.
I don’t have any shots of the cranes at night because I just watched rather than fumble with phone, but I have posted some shots from other days – one of the cranes going low over town during the day, and of course, our constant companions all summer in the south, Jupiter and Saturn. Mars is in the east these days. It’ll never be easier to see so look up this weekend.
Passing in the Night
I stare out from the city walls, waiting
For migrating cranes to come calling:
Glimpse against low city-glow clouds.
Bats pass but no birds; Mars my only
Other midnight companion, with
Jupiter and Saturn at my back, a
Spider spinning draws eyes down
From treeline to the damp stone:
Seeing mites crawling across lichens
White in the street light, changes
Perspective. Some comfort comes
From knowing creatures will roam
Over these stones even if crumbled;
And the bodies above me will circle
Unceasingly in their great migrations,
When neither walls nor men yet stand.
Happy Halloween
Halloween is a strange time for me.
I’ve been in the ER twice on Halloween, back in Ireland, as a kid and a young man who should have known better. Actually, the kid should have known better, too.
But shit happens.
It’s also one of the times when I most feel homesick, when I feel most proud to be Irish – those who know me know I care little for sport or other ritualistic nationalistic shite.
I am always aware of the entities that might collide with my life on Samhain.
This year, we’re all wearing masks, and we can’t go and ask for any apples or nuts or even sweets, since this year things are scarier than they used to be, and going to the ER is not a nice idea even for a cough.
I actually have an appointment after nightfall – at the PCR testing point. Not for me, but I’ll be cycling along under the full moon with my mask and perhaps a bit of disguise, just in case the spirits are soaring over Spain.
So stay safe, everyone, and hopefully this nightmare will be over (not before Christmas, though!)
Here’s a poem about twilight, and the tricks our eyes can do, even without the Samhain imagination to help them. There are good things we can see if we try.
And when you look up at the moon, ponder this – which is scarier, the myth of the werewolf, or the truth?
http://www.tirgearrpublishing.com/authors/OBrien_David/leaving-the-pack.htm
Optical Illusions
It is in the gloaming that the eye is
Overcome by the clear view of
Imagination. More than the shapes of
Shadows becoming beasts instead of
Branches, shades seeming to move
When still steady stones, it creates
Shifting scenes swapping some
Creatures instead of others.
The tree leaves sway in the breeze
As if waves were washing seaweed
Sideways to the shore, before me;
Staring up at steely sky turn dark,
The heart-pushed corpuscles in
Retina rush across my vision,
Taking forms of those dear departed,
Heaven-skating swifts, and I wish
They could go on thus until the
Stars transform the sky to diamonds,
Transporting me through the air
Unblinking as if I could follow there.
Summer Poems
Sometimes it feels like a nuisance, as a writer, to be a poet too.
So many hours can go by just making some short poems as perfect as I can make them…
But you can’t escape the way the writing comes.
Here are a selection of this summer’s work…
The Weight of Centuries
From the hilltop, the plain extends into haze,
A mosaic of mixed farming and forests
Even against the noise of the swish of
Windmills, the insects persist, cicadas trill, drill
Butterflies flutter across this pre-alpine meadow
Which has persisted despite pine plantations
Roads cut into the red earth
I sit on a fallen stone wall on which so many days have stretched,
Spying small valleys into which vineyards have been etched
And I feel the weight of centuries.
Spanish Holidays
I have returned from my homeland to my adopted home
And wonder now where to take my holidays.
I watch tourists of my same shade trail past
This terrace exploring the old town of Pamplona,
Its small cobbled streets, of which I live in the thick.
It’s a privilege to drink this beer here, in holiday clothes
With nothing to do but write and raise my child, and
While aware this is my own particular “first world problem,”
I wish still to somehow, for some days, “get away from it all.”
Tethered Walk
The ultimate experience of
A walk into the wilderness
For most – that stroll in swimsuit
Along the surf alone
While the family builds sandcastles,
Untethered to anyone – is now tainted
By the telephone taken along.
Last Bastions for All to Admire
The last bastions of utter luxury
Still stand,
And we can look upon them
And wonder
What it must have been like
For those
Who were able to enjoy them
In purity,
Before the rest of us arrived
Upon the sand.
In an Old Farmyard
Sun warms a wall, formerly whitewashed,
Now sand blasted to expose the beauty of
Raw stone and soft mortar in irregular mosaic.
Similar pillars stand centuries, supporting
Painted red gates that seldom open upon
A lane left to the birds and other wildlife,
Now a road to nowhere in time, like byres
And empty stables into which swallows
Still swoop to suspended nests of soil through
Slit windows, simply monuments to former toil.
At the Waterfall
Waterfall echoes white noise,
Breeze whispers through oaks.
Observing butterfly lawn,
Lounging on picnic blanket
Under piebald white and blue sky,
But unable to block out banal
Banter and utter bollox of
The barbequing family
Who parked their car beside us.
I’ll Take the Moon
Over festivals all very stimulating,
With curves as wonderful as any in creation
During a night as long as stars can sustain,
A concert of the songs of our
Latest pandemic’s potentially greatest loss,
A spectacle of lights and dazzling objects,
I’ll take the moon,
Rising orange in third quadrant
Past the Pyrenees.
There’s always another step to take…
I recently wrote an article about sticking with writing over years of unsuccessfully trying to get published, and how, twenty years after writing my first novel, I got it published and had it followed up by the second, and now I have contracts for five books, including one published under a pseudonym.
It’s hard to maintain confidence in your ability: I often thought I’d never sell a book, but along the way there were confidence boosts now and then when a poem was published, and a few quid here and there, even, for a poem or an article. When I finally got a contract, after all the effort, it was gratifying and affirming of my small amount of talent, and I felt vindicated in keeping at it.
I’d made that giant leap into Authorship.
But getting a book on the market – professionally edited and with a great cover that I was able to have some input in the design of – was just one more step forward, it turned out. I thought it was a giant leap because of my previous perspective – or lack of it.
It’s like an animation video describing the scale of the universe. You make it to the moon and before you have time to appreciate the view, the camera pans back to show just how far away Mars is, and then Jupiter, and how small our solar system is.
The journey has only really begun. It’s just you’ve learned to walk and been given a decent pair of boots, is all.
The pressure is not off now; it just got more intense.
Apart from building a platform, blogging and posting and advertising, there’s the requests for reviews and the feeling you have to get big sales, to justify the confidence in your work – and to a certain extent you do. Instead of feeling you’re no good if you can’t get an editor interested, now there’s the feeling that you’re not good enough if you don’t see lots of sales. Friends ask if you’re making millions yet – often despite not having read it themselves: and who ever sold a million copies of a book that wasn’t good enough for friends to bother with?
The reviews are another source of stress. You want everyone to love the book of course, but it becomes a bit over the top: what once might have been worthy only of a place in a desk drawer or the farthest reaches of a hard drive, suddenly needs to deserve only five star reviews.
God forbid someone should give it less than three!
But they do – they did mine already.
You can’t please everyone, and even fans of the genre might be your biggest stumbling block – especially if you did something with they didn’t expect, that quirk, that novelty, which pleases 9/10 readers, just doesn’t float the last one’s boat. They might even feel hard done by when the book doesn’t match their expectations – however misconceived they might be.
But the long term is what we have to look to again – just as before publication. Over the long haul, more will like it than not, and hopefully they’ll tell their friends. There will be reviewers who say they’re delighted to read a new slant, who believe your characters are great.
Nevertheless, in my short and scant experience, these great readers and reviews don’t do as much to put things in perspective as the old friends or colleagues who congratulate you and say they’re jealous of you. When you humbly tell them that you’re not making those millions, they shake their head and insist that they’re not jealous of you publishing, but of the fact that you actually wrote a novel: that you finished your shit, and polished it well enough that anyone would read it.
And that’s one of the things we need to keep in mind as we go to the next project, and keep blogging and advertising, and seeking more reviews. It’s a struggle uphill (hope Bjork doesn’t have that phrase copyrighted), but the fact we’re plodding ahead is something we need to be proud of.
David JM O'Brien 