A CHRISTMAS CARD FOR MUM AND OTHER POETRY by Martin Mc Carthy
A Christmas Special
A Christmas Card for Mum
Every year, at Christmastime,
I sent you a card,
and sometimes two,
because you liked getting them so much,
especially ones that were happy
and full of good cheer.
Earlier this year you died,
and there was a robin in the graveyard
when they buried you …
then the days flew by.
Now, already, it’s December.
You are eight months gone …
and I have sent the cards,
including yours,
with its bright image of a robin
singing in the snow.
But where to send it?
That question perplexed me a while;
yet the answer,
when it came, was simple …
I sent it to your new address:
No 2, Back Row of the Dead …
and Robbie, the postman,
who likes robins and snow,
delivered it to you
and said, ‘Happy Christmas.’Priorities for Sarah Marie and Joshua Nothing matters very much, except the days when I sat here, watching movies with the kids, when they were young, and there was a lockdown, and death stalked the streets outside. Nothing matters very much, except the days when I grew my hair long, like a sixties guru, and the kids were safe and strong, and the world was a ghost town, and it felt good to be trapped inside.
Stardust for Bob Zisk Poetry has a touch of stardust, the real thing, that is … not what passes these days for celestial beauty, but in truth contains nothing to rival Keats’s ‘Bright Star’, or Wordsworth’s starry mansions of the blest … Nothing numinous or luminous enough to lure our eyes away from self-reflecting mirrors in which the new seems rosy yet slights the Gods … the Muses … by being unblessed and prosy, for Poetry has a touch of stardust.
First Publication. The Orchards Poetry Journal: “A Christmas Card for Mum” The Road Not Taken: “Priorities”
Martin Mc Carthy is a contributing editor to the American poetry website, The HyperTexts. He lives in Cork City, Ireland, where he studied English at UCC and was awarded the H. Dip. in Education. His poems and essays have appeared in numerous print and online publications, including: Poems from My 5k, Drawn to the Light, Seventh Quarry Poetry, Poetry Salzburg, The Road Not Taken, The Lyric, The Orchards, WestWard Quarterly, Lighten Up Online, Better Than Starbucks, The Madrigal, The Chained Muse, New Lyre, The HyperTexts, The New Stylus, Southward and The Cathal Buí Anthology of Poetry. He has published three poetry collections: Lockdown Diary (2020), Lockdown (2021), and The Perfect Voice (2023). A fourth collection, The Book of Desire, is currently awaiting publication. He was shortlisted for the Red Line Poetry Prize, and is a nominee for the 2024 Pushcart Prize. He has a personal website at mccarthypoet.com and a Substack website at martinmccarthy.substack.com/
It wasn't my intention to say anything regarding the three poems featured in this post, but I have already received two messages asking me to do so, so I'll just say a few brief words about each of them.
'A Christmas Card for Mum' is, of course, a poem for my mother, who is sadly no longer with us. I miss her very much. And I did, in fact, send a Christmas card to the graveyard where she is buried, because I knew she'd like that, if she is still there somewhere disguised as a robin - the great symbol of renewal and rebirth.
'Priorities' is a poem I wrote during the Covid outbreak, outlining the importance of family members in our lives, especially children - and how we should cherish them above wealth and power and material things - which pale into insignificance in comparison.
'Stardust' is a poem dedicated to my friend, Bob Zisk, who perpetually endeavours to write poems of the highest quality imaginable. So my poem, rather inevitably, becomes a discussion of what that quality is. In other words, what differentiates a great poem from a mediocre one? If anybody has any thoughts regarding this, or anything else, please share them.
Happy Christmas, my friends!
Martin, Merry Christmas! I think this may be the poem to which you referred. I hope it still pleases:
Seneca by Moonlight
Clouds dispersed. The evening air grew still.
Crickets were silent. Coyotes did not howl,
And the crowns of the dark trees stood mute and tall,
Unswayed by the low piping of an owl.
October held her court among the stars,
And all the night paid homage. And I stood
Alone, as overhead the circling Bears
Ran in the plain of the Milky Way's flood.
Lords and ladies in tales already old
When old Mycenae was but a string around
A plot of dirt, traced their way through the cold
Autumn night, and a meandering wind
Murmured names and tales as vast as time
Itself. The Queen sat stately in her chair,
The Moon, cream white, ascended through her climb,
As pure as death and birth in the cold air.
And I, who've walked in the glow of their far flung light,
Exhaled a silver fog of spirit and dreams
That spiraled, curled, and wound into this night,
Drawn by tethers of stardust and moonbeams.
There is a place for me, perhaps, out there
Among the speckled swales of indigo,
And someday, when my smoke is blown through the clear
Breadth of night, I will draw the Archer's bow
And shoot an arrow across this galaxy,
And when it sinks in the wide ocean of space,
I'll walk the Dogs across the jeweled sky,
And in startrails and moonshine find my place.