John F. McCullagh Poems

The sunlight, like a mother’s touch,
lies gentle on the water’s face.
The last warm breath of summer past
Not ready yet to yield its place
...

The bachelor and the spinster
stood together, hand in hand,
before the Priest who’d wed them
in the chapel Kilmainham.
...

My parents passed away last spring. Two weeks apart, it was hard to bear.
She was a cellist, he played violin. Their instruments were old and rare.
Growing up, I'd hear them practice. For practice is the only way
to make effort appear effortless in the first chairs on concert day.
...

</>In the hills above Strabane
in a little churchyard there
stands a Celtic cross of stone
That marks my father's parents' grave.
...

It seemed an inauspicious birth,

another mouth to feed on earth.
...

"Shots Fired." "Officer Down"
The Navy Yard is a killing ground.
High above the Atrium floor,
The first person shooter
...

When I was young,
and bedtime loomed,
my Father used to read to me;
stories from a wondrous book.
...

He sits with a stoic's resistance,
his son in the casket lies there.
No line of a tear mars his visage-
the man with the Thousand yard stare.
...

The Dressmaker

Her fingers are good, she can sew, she can thread.
She has time on her hands, now that her husband is dead.
...

It goes back forty summers to a hot August night.
This cold case I'm working with no end in sight.
The girl, Leslie Zaret, was last seen alive
At the Pioneer tavern, she was standing outside.
...