My high cheekbones are boulder stone, my grey suit
seamless; I am pillar, post, path - the coping stone.
I slab and clad, am lintel, slate roofs, give shelter;
an absolute rock – I am house, home, hearthstone,
I build empires, am column, coliseum, temple –
mules clomp up my cobbles; on my crags, castles.
I bridge storm’s spate, am stepping stone, bedrock,
keystone, headland, cliff – waves crash at my feet;
an absolute rock, all bank on me, mine my deposits;
I am others quarry, my rock - crushed stone, rubble,
a hole in the wall, touchstone; I am sloped scree,
the rocky road – potholed; my nose, grindstone,
my greying grain, hard vein, my granite - measled,
my jagged teeth, grey filled; I am millstone, crock,
my crushed dust, blinding - my tilted bed, cold slab;
my head stone chiselled: I am my own tombstone.
Jim McElroy is winner of the Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing, the Francis Ledwidge Poetry Award, the Mairtín Crawford Award, the Poetry Business International Book and Pamphlet Competition; also selected for Poetry Ireland’s Introductions series and nominated for Irish poem of the Year, he is a double awardee of an Individual Artist Award by Arts Council NI, second prize winner at the Bridport Poetry Awards, and a commended prize winner in the National Poetry Competition. His winning pamphlet, We Are The Weather, will be published by Smith|Doorstop.
More work by Jim McElroy
Tel: 028 7126 6946
Email: hueditor@theverbal.co
Verbal, Stable Lane and Mall Wall, Bishop Street Within, Derry/Londonderry, BT48 6PU
companyCopyright © 2026 Honest Ulsterman