Lough Ennell. Photo by John McCauley

November Poems

by Brendan Martin

The Other Side

Come to the other side, they said;

as I squashed Autumn underfoot,

crunching leaves into each other;

like mixed up jigsaw pieces of decaying golden browns,

mingling with open beech nut shells,

sycamore helicopters and occasional chestnuts.

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Come to the other side, called the whisper of the breeze,

in Belvedere; as I marvelled at Lough Ennell,

through skeletal boughs and branches of un-fallen trees,

after a recent storm had stripped the colours in the sky,

and placed them at my feet.

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I offered no reply.

I have seen the other side, and have now returned.

Too soon for me to choose.

Too soon for them to choose.

They will attract other passers-by,

through their thin veil of Samhain,

between today; tonight and tomorrow.

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All Saints Eve, we were told.

All the spirits in reality; saints and sinners,

inviting the living to the future;

where witches hunt, and ghosts haunt;

where cats, and bats and goblins,

ghouls and all invented monsters,

burrow into our thoughts.

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Come to the other side,

before you re-awaken, all the other souls forsaken;

calling through the night of October the Thirty First,

when the loudest and the worst

of all of Samhain’s harbingers,

weep already fallen tears, feed already on our fears;

and have been doing it for years.

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No more looking to the other side.

They can go wherever they choose to be.

Away from here, the night, and me.

Halloween’s veil can no longer trap me.

It is simply a window to tomorrow,

where all of November looms.

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November 5th

With eyes of stares and scary gawks,

among the ghosts he slyly walks.

He hovers like a king of hawks

surely seeing prey he stalks;

they whisper, “look, it’s him, it’s Fawkes’.

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All was cold, then soon it got

smoky, smelly and blazing hot;

success he thought; but it was not,

he failed with his gunpowder plot.

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Time itself might wonder why

we offer pennies for the guy

who tried to send King James on high,

but failed to keep his powder dry.

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And as through time our memories shift,

we give ourselves a yearly gift,

as if to make our spirits lift;

all reference to November 5th.

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Reaching for The Past

All day long

he carved their names in stone,

then barefoot, jumped,

and landed waist-deep,

upright,

in the water of his choice;

the splashing drops of Shannon

dribbling down his face,

as he gazed at Clonmacnoise;

a monument to time, like

Mellifont and Sligo,

all heritage combined for prayer,

burial, and re-growth.

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His work remains today

with yellow lichen patches

and time worn letters;

some still legible.

His hands are still;

his chisel long decayed, returned to earth

and there to rest in peace;

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like all the headstones standing,

and those, with time blown over;

their shadows reaching outwards,

on a short November evening,

towards the Shannon,

as if to bring him back

to carve their epitaphs once more.

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Brendan Martin is a member of Inklings Writing Group, who meet on Tuesdays at 11am in the Annebrook House Hotel. Mullingar. Visitors welcome.