The Innisfree Poetry Journal

www.innisfreepoetry.org

by David Brendan Hopes

Laurel for the Laureate

This morning early I watched the

sea-cloud over Knocknarea,

concealing her sometimes as if she were

a table or an ordinary hill,

then revealing her of a sudden

in a flash of blue swords.

I thought of this when you stood on stage,

sir, sometimes an old man

with trouble remembering,

sometimes the blue fire falling

and the jeweled fields flattened with it,

in the field the white flowers wrenched aside.