Listening to Frank Dullaghan reading his poetry is a new found Dubai Pleasure. His gentle and full voice is warming, at times funny, and a welcome addition to the Poeticians. I thank him for his smiling and serene presence at our readings.

Seeing The Light
by Frank Dullaghan.

How sophisticated these girls are,
thirteen or fourteen years old,
sitting in this coffee shop eating pastries,
conspiring together with their dark eyes
so that everyone else here feels like outsiders.
I swear to God, one says in her South Kerry lilt.
And whatever it is she attests to
they all bubble into laughter.

I broke the surface of the book I was reading,
to take notice of them – full of themselves
the way most of us are empty of ourselves,
throwing their light about this room
like they had batteries to spare,
globules of it landing on tables
where old men mutter to newspapers,
where a woman checks that she hasn’t changed
in a little pocket mirror.

And one globule touches down on my table
between my poetry book and the salt cellar,
sits there pulsing, excited by its own luminance.
It would seem that I’m the only one to notice.
The girls have no regard,
incandescent as they are in their high voltage,
the only impossibility the old men believe in
is their own, and the young woman
reflects only on herself.

I pick up my gift
and place it on my tongue,
looking for that particular wisdom of youth
that would make everything possible again.