Ted McCarthy

Angels
Under the soft wash of an Irish summer rain
the marble of a small angel
marks death in innocence; its plaque,
time cut and a measured mourning.
Strangers but knowing, heading home, we turn
away from this singular grief and into
our managed greens whose roads
speed us smoothly across their secrets.
Later, under the sudden wedge
of a breaking sun, warm wine
and an evening chilled by a documentary
item: light cruel as truth,
a wilderness cleared, and spread
like white wings, the bones of child soldiers.

Chains
We can choose the chain
we want to be – human, or
cold steel in a cage.

Hungers
Always the sun rises on the newly-blind,
sets, gorgeous-red, on an old hunger.

Twin swarms of locusts: silver
fighters passsing over a flight of food.

The mind that swallows knowledge filters
the smallest clot of conscience.

And the hand that cups a candle-flame
can grip the life’s breath of a stranger.