What was happening (Augher, NI)

I.

A cold carrot, peeled
over a white bowl.

Fits of color out there. My

dress is still black.

Sunset is hours away
from where you are.

Maybe you are cutting a sandwich
into triangles

or squinting because the sun
is high.

My sun drops in no particular way.

A cold carrot, cut up
and steamed.

II.

No one mourned for the calf
that died

this morning. I watched its birth

earlier this week
from the second floor window.

The heifer floated her body
over him, offering milk.

Everyone mourned.

It was born too quickly,

I thought. Its body falling

into the field, black
as turpentine.

III.

I thought I was describing your eyes
but I was only ever

painting my own.

A mirror hangs miraculously
by thin string.

IV.

I take a photograph of my father
sitting perfectly

in a gap
between two stone walls

as if they were built around him

as he drank his tea.

V.

We touch each hand with tender-

ness. Tapping or resting

as hands do
with instruments or glass

things. You don't dance
someone tells me

with enough vigor.

VI.

The countryside rounds into
itself around us.

Are you writing about being here?

Yellow whin in the elbow
of the lane.

Through the white light

of the computer screen: you kiss
my offered cheek.

VII.

A man in Beragh unscrews
his one light bulb from the ceiling

in the kitchen.

He carries it slowly
to another room,

pitched in darkness,

and begins to twist it into a fixture,
twisting light back

into being.