Michael Durack

Michael Durack lives in County Tipperary, Ireland. His poems have appeared in publications such as The Blue Nib, Skylight 47, The Cafe Review, Live Encounters, The Poetry Bus, The Stony Thursday Book, The Honest Ulsterman and Poetry Ireland Review. With his brother Austin he has recorded two albums of poetry and guitar music, The Secret Chord (2013) and Going Gone (2015). He is the author of a memoir in prose and poems, Saved to Memory: Lost to View (Limerick Writers Centre 2016) and two poetry collections, Where It Began (2017) and Flip Sides (2020) published by Revival Press.

THE MUSIC OF MILKING

Milking the cows in that draughty barn hands, teats and bucketcontrived to make music.
The discordant staccato of the tune-up notes as jets strafed the empty galvanised pail. Then between adagio and allegroliquid on liquid as the milk accumulated.
And finally the legato sostenutoof white rain drenching rich froth.Cow and boy in warm harmony whenlike Kavanagh’s mother outside in the cow-house I made the music of milking. 

NOON CHORUS

As Roy Orbison’s plaintive In Dreams eschews repetition so does the blackbird trill his notes in endless variation.
While the song thrush, fresh out of Tin Pan Alley or the Brill, sticks to the formula, pipes loudly, doubles and trebles.
The willow warbler launches his high soprano, then plummets down the scales until his music fizzles out.
As does the chaffinch, but he in a spirit of mischief ventures a snide wolf-whistle before he slings his hook.
The great tit’s ambulance siren, the greenfinch’s wheezeand the bullfinch’s creaking rusty gate - it takes all sorts.
Even the boring five-note wood pigeon and the raucous punk-rocker, the jackdaw or rook,
Those out-of-tune subversive anti-cantorsmay audition for a place in the noon chorus.

ON TOUKNOCKANE

On Touknockane I struck a match under a grove of rampant furze to feel a primal force unloose, to hear the scratch and rasp and crackle, to breathe the perfumed woodburn scent and watch the flaring flaming waves, smoke plumes billowing in the sultry air towards Pedlar’s Hill and Annaholty, to sense an adult electricity pulsing through the fingers of a boy.
Today what’s left of Touknockane is quarried lake and wilderness, a colony of resurgent furze all match-less green and blazing gold above a roaring motorway.

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