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Showing posts with the label Ken Ireland

BCR Case 30

  Ken’s verse Issan wove a tale about a secret recipe  For chocolate chip cookies. He would share it if you helped in the kitchen. Of course I helped. We all helped. It was like a promise. Everyone did.  How could you say no to Issan? After we’d put on our aprons After all the ingredients had been found Dry stuff from the pantry Butter from the refrigerator Lots of it Sugar from the top shelf Neat brown bags with chocolate  And chocolate chips Carried in from the back seat of the car The oven was preheating. He was a stickler about the temperature The cookie sheets laid with parchment paper. We each had our bowl and task assigned None was burdensome Though some were more fun than others. When the time came we each took  What we had and Issan directed us Towards a big mixing bowl And we folded them together Not rushed or with a lot of jerky motion Big globs of butter stood out  From bits of Hershey Putting them on the sheet with the correct spacing Because he was always generous with th

Regret

Sometimes I wish Who I was Was not What I did Did never And was also not But that’s not right To make it disappear I shift the story Slightly skewed The end is wrong It doesn’t fit It cannot ever end at all I craft my tale For a dark winter’s night When nothing’s right That‘s also wrong She says she wishes She was 18 I say 60 We only dream She says  Slight is slight I say  Dark is dark And night is night Neither’s right Who we were Is not who we are Right now Ken Ireland

Mihi videtur ut palea

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Father Nolan’s baritone would have made a camel blush But he launched into “Tantum Ergo” With the enthusiasm of an Irish barroom brawl. He was tone deaf  Bringing the mystery of all things transcendent Down to earth where mere mortals can fight about them. Brawls with priests in attendance are nothing new And not usually a laughing matter. Choirmaster trains with a whip No mercy for wayward lads. Nolan was deadly serious. I was once on his list. Aquinas tried to complete the work Of Nicaea. Truly god is truly god. True means true. It means When you bite the coin It cracks your teeth. Breath that rattles straw. More straw please.

A Few Still Words

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  A retreat Chapbook Rohatsu, 2022 Ken Ireland Pilgrim's Progress In the Cave of Sister Mary Kevin, Ursuline Why Did Bodhidharma Kick Up His Heels? In defense of really bad poetry This One Precious Human Life A Dream Drape All the Mirrors Blessing the Boats (at St. Mary's) by Lucille Clifton; translation, Ken Ireland   Outside My Window Pilgrim's Progress Will my heart ever warm to these foreign gods? No matter that we shaved our heads for a while. No matter that we wore socks that felt more like gloves than the fingerless mittens that mother stuffed our hands into when the pond froze over. There is still some mystery the heart cannot speak.   Sometimes I feel as if I've been snowed into that one room school my grandpa talked of, huddled around the stove, a gang of kids jostling for attention like best grades, playing with tongue tangled words in a Sanskrit yeshiva, parsing phrases as cold as Tibetan snow. I aim for the precision of the shovel I used to dig out the fami