Poetry By Bernard Gilhooly

Dead Season

In a dead season,

The child with his hoop

Scudding

Down empty dust-blown streets;

Spinning top

Whipped crazily clockwise,

Hours and years

Whirled ticking into silence;

In cobbled gutter

Thumb flicks marbles,

Hand turns to show

Scabbed sore knuckles ....

Healed now, as from the fireside

I watch wind thrash among leafless poplars;

Suddenly I see him

Pause by the gate – look up;

I knock on the window,

But he cannot hear,

Immersed out there

In his long-dead season.