Derek Coyle [Ireland]

 

Those Days in Letterkenny
 
Buncrana stank of smelly fish, Letterkenny
was very heaven – tonnes of Oatfield
 
butter and sugar and cream. They made
chocolate toffees – Emeralds and Eclairs.
 
We’d savour their scent on summer holidays
when you told us about Peggy’s Leg –
 
a name that made us laugh – sticks
of sugar wrapped in cellophane,
 
all the more mysterious
for our never having tasted them.
 
I want to ask you, did you love
cough sweets, lemon drops, clove rock?
 
There’s so much I need to learn
about you – like why you left farming
 
and decided to join the army.
Why weren’t you a fan of The Beatles,
 
not even The Rolling Stones –
what was it about you preferred
 
the tenor voice of John McCormack
– Tom Waits was a fan,
 
but that would mean nothing to you?
I loved the faint taste of coconut
 
in an Oatfield Emerald caramel –
did you, Dad? There’s so much
 
I don’t know about you – and you nearly gone.
 
 
Carlow Poem #227
 
After breakfast this morning,
Weetabix and chilled milk,
 
after the first cup of coffee,
I sit down to Tranströmer.
 
He is a slice of melon
with yoghurt,
 
a yoghurt with a bitter taste,
refreshing the palette.
 
Yoghurt with a hint of lemon.
 
 
 
For an old school friend
 
You in blue cords
a grey woollen jumper    yes
corduroy trousers some called jeans
 
so warm in winter  duffel coats
their leather straps wrapped around plastic
faux-bone buttons
 
you were handsome
I thought
even at twelve or thirteen
 
your hair   silky and thick
I could never imagine
your funeral    me at university
 
you at home    going slowly blind
I imagine you learning guitar
figuring out Joni Mitchell
 
something from Blue
Bob Dylan    the joy
of discovering the acoustic virtues
 
of Nirvana    all apologies
the man who sold the world
and on then to Clapton
 
singing out the blues on an old Martin   a joy
there might have been joy
in an audio book
 
what you might have made
of the parties of Jay Gatsby
the psychology of murder
 
in Dostoyevsky
patient love
the touch of a caring hand   a caress
 
the shifting tones of the human voice
I think of you    wishing
you’d found a new way to be yourself
 
 
to say what you felt    something
to keep you safe   away
from that car    the closed garage
 
I wish you were still here    Peter 
 
 
Author’s Bionote:
 
*Derek Coyle (Ireland, 1971). His poetry book “Reading John Ashbery in Costa Coffee Carlow” (2019) was shortlisted for the Shine Strong 2020 award for best first collection. “Sipping Martinis under Mount Leinster” (2024) is published in a dual language edition in Tranas, Sweden. His poems have appeared in “The Irish Times”, “Irish Pages”, “The Stinging Fly”, “Poetry Salzburg Review”, “The Texas Literary Review”, “The Honest Ulsterman”, “Orbis”, “Skylight 47”, “Assaracus”, “The High Window” and ‘The Stony Thursday Book”. He reviews books regularly, and he has written literary essays on the poetry of Seamus Heaney, John Montague, James Schuyler and Paula Meehan. He lectures in Carlow College/St Patrick’s, Ireland.