Picture (A family of black immigrants, 50s, on a wet street in Dublin.)

by

Adam Parry.      

 

He had bought her a first communion dress

on Tuesday.

Tuesday was hot, hot a sunny day.

In the shop it shone out from the window.

Sunday! Sunday rained.

They had to walk to the church

in the rain almost the first out the door the dress lost it’s brilliantine,

another new Communion dress, faded, mossed over

by the time they got to the Church she seemed a coal-miner;

wet as her Dad and Leo in the pram in.

 

After the Communion they were walking home and the rain fell

on them even harder. The street was deserted and shops shut. Awful grey streets

a dirt windows, silhouetted forms huddled ones and twos

brighter, out shone the little girl’s communion dress.

 

In the shop windows while they swam against the tides of the rain

and the street was so, so long.

 

I wanted to cry, but that would make the rain, rain harder and home seemed

impossible, faraway place wet as I was.

 

 

Poem for Sara by Adam Parry

 

Poem for Sara

 

As dark as I am you are

light.

Your weightless heart

beats faster.

Your love is always

yours to give.

I worry how to forgive.

You are a sheltering forest

I am a single tree upon a

hill-top in the sun and storm.

You give good, see Jesus

in this stranger I have become

and it hurts my heart

for all I see is hate.

 

Dream by Adam L Parry.

 

Red bright, in my beautiful dream, a snow queen

long locked away- our

eyes met over the ice-cream counter-

a green bag over her shoulder

of plastic and black

her pale face, unmarred,

unfreckled, she sleepwalks

to work, dreams her own

dreams counting the footprints in the snow

I left behind.

Perhaps, perhaps the Snow

Queen will come to me as I sleep

In Beauty.

 

LARA POEM

 

 

The magic remains in the colour of your hair.

The beauty belongs in your so white eyes.

The love is recalled as you sleep and sigh.

The truth is recalled in your blue, blue eyes

The truth remains in the hands that holds.

The sorrow returns as you turn away and go,

But happiness returns in the magic that remains.

 

After the sadness my heart opens again

 

July 27^th.  By Adam Parry

 

“Colour in my heart,” the lion cried

from the dot to dot picture I had made.

“Make me look serene yet ferocious

that I may seem to clutch brightness

with my golden stare,

make my land a Kaleidoscope, as you

touch colour to the savannah and sun where I belong.”

 

I took some blue and gold and dew

 coloured in the lions land

put texture and tricks of the light

the pencil drew out of me.

As if meditating over the surprises of time

as I inspect the sun.

I display the light upon the lion’s mane.

Unthought-of, in a thoughtless moment,

the lion on the paper

roared with pleasure at the land I had made for him.

 

Poem... by Adam Parry

 

From a small red book by AL Parry.

 

Love is a diamond

held hidden for so, so long.

Accident or design?

Love is lost and found

in a dark clown’s smile-where a stranger’s

fears crash upon the rocks and

uncover the birth place of the diamond

a moment waited for forever

and beauty enters the day.

Lyndie by Adam Parry

 

Lyndie.

 

She has COPD now

and doesn’t call me these days,

but she always, always made me laugh and

I wonder:

Does she have someone

to laugh at her jokes

as she smokes her fruit-flavoured tobacco?

 

She used to look like

Paula Yates and her

white witch boyfriend looked like

Michael Hutchins.

He never made me laugh.

Thinking of her I smell the fruit-flavoured

tobacco that almost made want to throw up

when I took a drag.

 

Do you like that? She asked, pointing

at a picture and I didn’t want to say I did

when I didn’t, but I said yes anyway

when it was crap.

 

She always had cats.

Nala would, like an Olympic gymnast,

somehow

jump up to the top of the tall bookcase

as though merely stepping over a puddle

on Urquhart Road.

 

Seems so long ago doesn’t it?

And she says yes as if she doesn’t

want to be sad and goes and makes

a pizza and would make me

eat it all.

Seems so long ago now doesn’t it?

But, she doesn’t answer.

 

When I ring she doesn’t answer.

She has COPD now and I

wonder if she’s dead so I hang up,

sick of friends dying on me

so selfishly.

 

But, by the Bay she cuts up

tomatoes and peppers,

onions and lettuce

Original 106 on in the background

and she sings along.