From “The Ghosts of Barnacullia”

October and the rain is warm the light moving across the water’s surface is there and not there like a voice you remember say your mother’s youthful as once she was on a day like this embracing the sunshine breaking through or watching it trace between her fingertips so real you can almost believe again in the silence between you, her breath on your cheek while you lay ill in bed and in only a moment a bell is ringing or your father is singing in the kitchen about strangers and without even an echo or the echo of an echo all of this is gone and we’re walking again to the Hellfire Club or the Sugar Loaf, it’s Sunday there’s not much traffic, and on the hills as you run twigs, and small black pellets are vanishing beneath your feet