Poetry Helen Dempsey

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: HELEN DEMPSEY

Helen Dempsey from Rush, has been published in anthologies, magazines, online, and local radio. She holds a Masters Degree in Poetry Studies from D.C.U. Most recently her poems have been appeared in Live Encounters and the Irish Chair of Poetry commorative anthology. She won Fingal Libraries' Poetry Day competition 2021.

Early Evening in the City

Early evening in the city, hot, sultry, thronged with fresh-faced strangers vibrant youth, loud gabblers, exchanging the measures of the holiday shrieking top notes, shared laughter of transient experiences for the fortnight, or language month, delving into the shallows of another culture while residents criticize the babble, or their space on the street.

Outside the two-Euro shop a five-year old and his younger sister ignore their mother who keeps places in a Luas queue. Oblivious to the obstruction, their new plastic dinosaur roams the pavement while pedestrians step around her children's Jurassic world.

Up the street capital dwellers redden, assaulted by the sights and smells of city filth. Addicts roar abuse, reel, peddle, use, discard liquor cans, needles, junk. Bitterly a pensioner combs the area for uniformed protection. The norm of cuts brings no one.

On the bridge the crouched beggar mumbles for assistance. Approached by fresh-faced, Simon Samaritans they smile, chat, offer him bread and soup from a flask in their rucksack. In the gneiss and schist of granite slabs stained with chewing gum decency sparkles.

Helen Dempsey

Insomnia

Close leaden lids for a little while the dark aisle of the capricious moon has hours of restlessness yet to trace.

Hump a turn to the other wall, face familiar silhouettes' cocoon designed for rest; décor out of style.

Mound of books and untidy clothes piled, another chore puffs guilt balloon, lazy promise of a clean-up. Race

against incessant clock that graces the locker as semaphore ticks ruin sleep peace. Cross-examine daytime trials,

events reworked. Conquer my facile servile inadequacies. Festoon in weighty words, arguments. Retrace

your last retort, put-down clichés. Brace for revelations. Set to impugn rows. Wrestle reality. Beguile

ego. Night hero - in light - docile. Reveries of sleep, stir opportune private wish which harbours no disgrace.

Pigeon chorus proclaims the day’s pace, soothes troubled soul. Sun peeps over dune. To close leaden lids now is futile.

Helen Dempsey

Lambay

Through my kitchen window I live on the threshold of mystery.

This stationary Brendan’s-whale weather-vane swathes cloud shadow, rain.

Morning sun pitches from behind the dune light shards to make crystal rainbows on my cupboards.

Clothes billow in the east-north-east salt the drying, pennants of obscurity.

In the old days, a handful of locals plied the life-line, the Shamrock carried nurse and priest when the mainlanders were trusted. Boats are rusted now.

Trees hide habitation and helipad. Rare invitations. Cattle freckle grassy slopes on summer days, sailors in the club recount sightings of puffins, seals, wallabies.

Sharp-toothed rocks sink the unsuspecting, shrouded secrets lap in innocent swells.

A pilot boasts of costal jewels in the queue as we approach the airport, I do not recognize it from the sky.

Stories of Roman remains in the lore of gas-men laying fossil pipes. Courts silenced history.

The great leviathan, my facet of this diamond, broods in cumulus, haloed by mists.

On the threshold of mystery I am lured through my kitchen window.

Helen Dempsey

Sappho the Wolfhound

Cú Chulainn's hound could have crossed these fields to Lusk. Its descendent roams Ardgillan's woods and slopes. Mists roll between hazel, hawthorn, rowan, oak. They named her Sappho. Her grace, pace, gentle eyes wait for a greeting, ladylike, not raucous, like the Lesbian lyrist played at Grecian bawdy beanos, weddings, wakes and victories.

Stately epics sung by Gaelic Filí, lore of ancients saved for a modern student, scraps of parchment found by the poet's lovers; translation headache.

Sappho rambles steep, uphill, constitution, Hopes to meet her there, on the castle's driveway. Heart flutters in sight of her regal coming. Fancy the chances!

Transit mode is hard on her master's body. Lifting Sappho into a car is painful. Wooden, slanted plank is her owner's answer. Classical climb in.

Warriors at rest, drank their fill of her words. Opaque history obscures her ancestry. Imprints the labours of a Hellenist girl with pithy syllables, rhymed to bardic air. Small islands have no hold on mighty legends, nor quills, noble deeds, nor giants of their breed.

Helen Dempsey

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