Two Poems by Clifton Redmond

Notice from N.A.M.A.

She was already gone
when the For-Sale sign went up.
It was winter.  The house itself fell
to its concrete knees, the doors seized,
windows froze to outside-blindness.
The garden gathered what shrubs it could
but the grass was livid--ran wild.

The hearth's warmth waned,
a nest of ember-eyes closed
to ashen-dead.  When the light
switches forgot their electric promise
she was already gone.  She clung
to keys that hung from a Swarovski keyring.
Wrapped in a blanket that bled

threads, she walked halls
of half-stripped walls,
the memories torn down, trinkets
shrouded in black-and-white newspaper
headlines, crosswords, obituaries, and packed
into boxes.  When the removal van
pulled up to the gate, she was already gone.



Word Garden

Today I'm sifting fresh clay,
not seated at the computer
in the box-room
at the back of the house

with its single window.
I am among the seed bed's
slow anticipation where letters
litter my own soil and each root

promises an open flower.
Not in the keyboard prison
where time is heavy, overburdened
with the internal gravity

of some imagined conversation
between Descartes and Hume
who wouldn't have given him
the time of day--'get out

of your own head, it's not
all about you,' would be Hume's say.
So I leave them to themselves
go out into my word garden

lie on imagined grass,
pull petals from miraculous
sproutings wrapped
in my brand new vines of ivy.

Clifton Redmond is a member of the Carlow Writers' Co-operative, his work has appeared in various online and print journals and has been placed in various competitions and awards.  He is a student studying Humanities at Carlow College St. Patrick's.