Vincent Hughes is a graduate of the MA in Writing programme at NUI Galway and an amateur photographer. Much of his writing is grounded in memories, and he has recently started using his photography in an effort to reflect the snapshot-esque nature of his poetry.

 

Time

You always liked
that in an era of smartphones
I always wore a watch.

When I brought you home
to meet my family in earnest,
I remember how you fawned
over the cheap pocket watches
I kept in my bedroom,
and how later that day
my father showed you
the collection of wrist watches
he’d gathered over the years.

In his youth,
he wanted to be
a watchmaker;
I grew up surrounded
by his timepieces,
the legacy of a passion
that never did die,
and every watch I’ve ever owned
was taken from his collection,
a connection through time.
I remember you thought that
somehow sweet,
but now my father’s watches
document the distance,
their hands charting
the spaces forming
between where we were
and where we are,
turning us to strangers.

 

 

Photographs

We let go
of those memories
long ago,
their faded
colours lost in time,
like a wave
washed away
our youth, our names, like
sandcastles.
We find ourselves here,
in photographs and silence,
mourning for what’s lost;
we keep the photographs as
proof that we once existed.

 

 

Fog

There’s a fog forming
over the horizon,
creeping down from mountaintops
and spilling over trees;
a static of the senses,
a dampening disease.

 

 

Overgrown

As a child I remember barbecues
in my grandparents’ garden,
an alcove by the greenhouse,
sheltered by the trees.
I remember labour in the sun,
my grandfather’s strength,
my grandmother’s kindness.
Their garden was sacred to me,
a place for beautiful things,
but as I grew older, I drifted away;
their garden became unfamiliar,
foreign soil.
Some weeks after my grandmother died
I found myself in that garden,
and I came to the alcove
that housed those barbecues
all those years ago,
and I found it overgrown.

 

 

The Fall

Here I find you,
deep in the wild,
carving paths
through mountains,
rocks, roots, and soil,
searching for the sea.