Canal Farewell    

for Marie Heaney

Hearts blinded to the stirring of last things

By the sheen of laughter over wine and oysters,

Begging off the nightcaps urged upon us,

The four of us bundled into a cab

That hurtled past our guest house by a block

And after much shouting shuddered to a halt

On the lamp-starred arch of Leeson Street Bridge.

We got out then and laughed goodbye all round,

Our shocks of white hair whiter than the moon.

Then you two climbed back in and headed home.

We stood for a second, nothing left to say,

Windowlights random in the surrounding walls,

The canal’s dark water under us there

Ambling so slowly it might as well be still.

Gibbons Ruark’s books of poems include Passing Through Customs: New and Selected Poems, Staying Blue and The Road to Ballyvaughan. He lives in Raleigh, North Carolina.