Smithereens Press Chapbooks The Sea Path by Ciarán O'Rourke | Page 22

in the way fruit is,
nor soft enough
to satisfy the mouth
or fill the aching palm.
Only, it was not the fruit
of poems that I was sending,
but another easy, breathing,
blemishable thing.
The thought, perhaps,
which if I wished enough
would sail through years
of oceanic air
unchanged,
or need of mine,
which might rain through
a sea-bright room
as stirred to life
as this one is,
to fall, by some halfmiracle of love
or hunger,
whole at last
into your open hands.

16