The Romanian

Seated at the entrance to an alley,
A music man on a shopping mall
Played his own plaintive melody
On a fine tuned Romanian fiddle
Attached to a shiny trumpet horn.

Playing to us, an elder of his race:
A conversation without speaking,
His heart and soul in his playing-
Saying what he couldn’t say at all;
His brown felt hat upon his head,
His bike leant up against the wall.

poem by Matt Mooney
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An Eye On London

The morning sky has a crest of a moon
Sitting up over my window's horizon,
Tall conifers compete with chimney stacks,
Castle top turrets and white office blocks;
The trickling traffic from King’s Cross below
Meets life coming into the city.

It’s quiet out there at four in the morning,
(The calm before the storm) ,
While the lights of the street lamps
Grow dimmer towards dawn
From my fourth floor eye on old London.

poem by Matt Mooney
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Before The Bombing

Crossing elegant Victoria railway station
She reaches for her ringing mobile phone:
Young and yet without an ounce of fear,
Still moving onward as it sings its signal.
She answers, smiling with sincere delight-
And who is to tell its not her father calling,
Just to say hello and ask if she’s alright.

A strict security warning mars the morning,
Insinuating the existence of an evil enemy
Who indiscriminately maim and cruelly kill,
Like the madmen did in the city of Madrid.

poem by Matt Mooney
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Tailback

In a traffic jam and I can see
Daffodils bedeck the ditches,
Benches in a people’s park.

Sideways there is a swamp
Where in the water preening
Stands a swan unperturbed.

A proud heron flies up above:
Once a tall and lordly one
Upheld its native landing rights,
Strutting around the grass
Within a nearby roundabout,
Reclaiming its own wetland.

As my patience in the tailback
Further ticks away from me
A brazen ambulance overtakes

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poem by Matt Mooney
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The Signalman

I see him as the signalman
On the unseen tracks of time
A family priest for all of us-
As we travel down the line.

Railway stations made him blue
When he was young and leaving home-
I wonder if it was his Signalman
That for so long kept him going? .

He taught the boys of Wexford
By the Barrow in New Ross
And at a later time the Déise lads
In Dungarvan’s lovely town;
A chaplin in Dublin's Liberties
Now in Limerick nearer home;
The road that led to his priesthood
Had earlier started off in Rome.

In his vestments with a bell of brass

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poem by Matt Mooney
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