From Blackrock
Here’s to you, ghost father, alive or dead,
your surname’s reserved seat, your vast
library of the unsaid;
to your one image, slip of the past
in blurred grey and white;
a soldier, sitting with my mother,
your smile sleepy, hers bright
as the ghostlight blowing your cover;
to the curse or gift you bestow:
abstraction, my soft spot for absences;
cloudwatcher, seawatcher, open to the slow
shift of light, the waves’ always present tenses;
to the given, darkening, Dublin Bay almost black
except, nearby, where a wave splits a rock.
by Mark Granier
from Ghostlight: New and Selected Poems, Salmon Poetry, 2017.
