Since She Told Him

For Jacob and Shannon

She told him he looked like
Jim Morrison, landed down
in Carlow in his crystal ship.

And she’d have to be his
LA woman since she told him
he looked like Jim Morrison.

They’ll enter their soul kitchen
every time they descend
the stairs for morning coffee

since she told him
he looked like Jim Morrison.
He occasionally wears shades,

I don’t know if he can sing.
After several years he still
lights her fires, and I don’t mean

the one in the grate.
There’s more to fire than coal.
Since she told him he looked like

Jim Morrison he can’t look
at his mother the same way.
Since she told him he looked

like Jim Morrison he can’t
aspire to look like Yeats. Some days
his smeg beard approximates

the facial hair of Yeats in his youth.
Some days he dreams
of the wild swans of Coole

as he walks by the Burren.
Since she told him he looked like
Jim Morrison he’s let out

a bit of his wild child.
Let’s hope he avoids bathtubs
in Paris and all that they entail.

It’d be nice to be buried
in Père Lachaise, but only after
eighty years of trudging

your earthly round. I hope
he writes poems as musical
as Jim Morrison sings, since she told him

he looked like Jim Morrison,
only a lot more of them.
How I see him, a rider on a storm

streaming in over Mount Leinster.

Derek Coyle’s Reading John Ashbery in Costa Coffee Carlow (2019) was shortlisted for the Shine Strong, 2020 award for best first collection. Sipping Martinis under Mount Leinster (2024) was published in a dual language edition in Tranas, Sweden. Derek’s poems have appeared in The Irish Times, Irish Pages, The Stinging Fly, Poetry Salzburg Review, The Texas Literary Review, The Honest Ulsterman, Orbis, Skylight 47, Assaracus, The High Window, and The Stony Thursday Book.  Derek reviews books regularly, and he has written literary essays on the poetry of Seamus Heaney, John Montague, James Schuyler, and Paula Meehan. He lectures in Carlow College, St Patrick’s, Ireland.