Invaders Out of the North

lowtide,
beneath grieving gulls they came,
heaving and cursing their dragons over the mudflats,
looking from Mulligan’s tower, huge and hairy,
a different kind than us.
I hid in a potato cellar and
brooded about God, unanswering God the Father,
And the gruesome marriage of potato and buttock.
When they drew near I strained
to hear, as once I’d laid abed,
straining to hear my parents’ strange night murmurings,
never quite succeeding.