Anni Wilton-Jones - Confined to Quarters

Anni Wilton-Jones, a resident of Co Mayo, has also lived in Wales, England and Saudi Arabia. Having experienced a varied range of careers she is now retired and concentrating on her writing and her photography. A writer of poetry and, occasionally, prose, she has read in Wales, England, the USA and Ireland. Her collections include Bridges, Winter Whiting, Moth (a chapbook about abuse, written under the pen-name Victoria Tims) and Put On Your Thinking Cap (a chapbook of photographs and poems for children). She currently leads Pen & Ink, a Mayo writers group, and is one of the organisers of the SiarScéal festival, for which she has edited the 2020 anthology.

Confined to quarters

A mimicry of starlings crowding branches or flying beaks laden worms and wasps bees and butterflies to fill the ever-open nestling throats

house martins swooping and swirling catching and carrying to nests high up under eaves

a cat confused running distractedly too much prey too fast too far away a buzzing a chattering

my acre overflowing unappreciated until now Covid 2020

Downpatrick Head

Bent against the gale raincoated cameras at the ready we are here to record the storm

high-rising surf pounding swirling waves beating on towering cliffs spume flying skywards all around the crash the thunder the howl of power unfettered absorbing us into its life elemental exhilarating

exhausting departing drained but ecstatic we are aware the photos will be amazing but still only a poor reminder of the day we were one with the wind.

Cracked

In the mirror I am distorted split down my forehead and my nose across my mouth and chin

as if I am two separate selves which look alike but act apart

and if I close one eye I can hide my left-sided deeds from my right-sided soul

but then I can do that without a broken mirror.

Under observation

A blasé browser she idles along aisles saunters round shelves casually toting an open bag

suspicious he observes as she picks up products inspects rejects and puts them back

as he watches she wanders away dissatisfied and departs

turning back to his task he makes a memo in his mind for a caustic critique stock so shoddy the shoplifter shunned it

on this his final Secret Shopper assignment it’s a denunciation to die for!

Petal of Gul Mohar flower on temple wall, photograph by Mark Ulyseas.