Oil Slick, Black Lit

I see the shining stripes

Of oil slick, black lit street lamps

Shimmering in the quiet dark inkpot soup of the bay

 

A midnight walk on the sleeping green

Past house after house adrift in dreams,

Night anchors down

And cast in pools of shadow…

 

See the dry boats,

Pier-bound, bright-awake

Holding court in the sodium glare

Far above the tide

 

Each one yearning to be held

By the deep liquid flow below them

Hull-sunk, quay-hugging,

And nestled into the darkness beneath their bows

 

I see them rippling in jagged reflection

Shards of colour

Like broken mirrors

Dancing in fluid bobbing splinters upon my doorstep

 

She’s black the tide tonight

A deep and narrow stretch of darker tar

In the vast paint pot of Galway bay

 

And as I watch

And contemplate the many names of nero

A pinpoint of light

And then three and more strike

And a sudden star-cloth on the rich black water twinkles,

 

Cast like a net from a night trawler,

Passing just as the clouds cleared.

                                                                                          M.McCarthy, April 2014

A winter shot of  Kinvara bay in the wee hours, taken from the ‘sleeping green.’ MMc 2014