Smithereens Press Chapbooks The Sea Path by Ciarán O'Rourke | Page 38

Keepsake
The stone
I cannot part with –
I anchor it daily
on the deep sea-bed
of pages by my desk,
a weight for paper
and for poems,
heartbeat-heavy,
but light enough
to let the summer whisper
in the sheaf
when windows open,
or when I leave,
thereby keeping,
in its skull-dull, colourless,
life-perfecting way,
the rhythm
of this room adrift,
and your image, too,
pocketing sea-stones
years ago, your
white dress bright
on the eye-grey shore,
and you smiling there,
as if our wave’s
unlovely sunder
would not come,
or as though the ocean
32