The best way out is always through – Robert Frost K.T. Slattery

The best way out is always through – Robert Frost

Dear Mr. Frost,

Your advice is some of the best I have ever gotten,

after the fact.

Hindsight is a complex thing, but I did make it through.

There were times I gave up, closed my eyes and hid

in my warm bed where it was safe, imagined sucking my thumb,

clutching my childhood

pillow and blanket to fruitless breasts, I stopped moving, self-sabotage at a standstill, resigned to this life sentence.

Angels disguised as friends

gave gentle nudges, pushed softly forward, reminded me how to acknowledge

a self-constructed prison.

I know reality alters and shifts, and I could allow the darkness to win over once again.

In the meantime, I will chant your aphorism like a mantra, praying it will take root, help me swiftly navigate

the next dark voyage.

Sincerely, Me

K.T. Slattery

Anointed

As I plunge below the icy depths I feel my worries washed out on a wave, My head submerged, now free of secrets kept And of burdens I no longer wish to save.

Beneath the dividing sheet of two domains As the water laps towards the bay And the air made warm by delicate summer rains I feel as light as golden hay.

Transformed again by the waters cure Baptised by the elements, washed and new, God’s healing hand felt in the ocean pure, My mind cleaned of disease by the deep blue.

Surrounded by the elements I feel light as snow And recognise my own impermanence Like the tide going out, I too, will go.

Michael Cullen

Kingfisher in slow motion, frame #7

Technology lets us be a god that can’t change everything, pausing the film to study a moment already gone;

the wingspan at its fullest, outward sprays a million beads of water, river jewels for the offerings, feathers deep-painted

by the wetness but not yet shaken off, azure blue, sunset orange a white chest full with the inhale, at the cusp of a mighty exhale.

The splendour of divine watercolour perfect to the eye that wants to see it, its long sharp beak at full hinge

makes room for the fish that came too close to the surface, its eyes seeing no danger to either side does not expect the above

to break the ceiling of its universe, it will struggle though it doesn’t know that it will be just a struggle.

Even if I could intervene I would be depriving one life for another, the bird must eat, the next frame will come.

Glen Wilson

Dear Jason,

I’ve been trying to come back to you, to shake you out from under the leaves

and find you under the cherry blossoms. But how can I come back

to you when I don’t know where you are? Perhaps you’ve taken to the Atlantic Ocean.

Perhaps your wetsuit clings to your skin, though it’s unlike you

to stay in one place for so long, so you can’t be found.

Taidgh Lynch

Speaking of You

In the flow of this world, its stream of peptides, DNA’s furl, faces, parishes, fern fronds uncurled, fingerprints swirling with currents

there is you – just you – your signature voice, your hands at rest on fret-board and strings, a Gallagher in waiting, Hendrix-on the-wing

and your face I know more clearly than my own, familiar country where sunlight walks fawn trackways.

Out of a shoal of leaves one leaf is topaz, gold. Out of a shingle mile, one stone insists; in cross-shore drift one shell says lift me.

Out of a river of strangers you turn to me like a truth.

Lynne Wycherley

The ones that are here still

To wander in the woods to smell autumn leaves to think about black holes you have left time and space now you float as atoms.

It must be good to be a bird make your alarm call, fly away re-locate to a nearby field or just stay high.

A photograph album of black and white faded colour, reminds what was before why does memory sweep with sad happiness, then catch and wrench?

How I miss you the ones that went before the ones that are here still I miss you all.

Sacha Hutchinson

Droplet

Not a moist lash to cushion your descent, not cheeks flush with autumn’s breath, where you might trickle, and tickle.

Each image is a millisecond of pain, blinking. Absorbed, these limpid capillaries are routes blinded by fear, socket perilous on a branch, whipping

wind circling this invisible cup of hurt, wooden stalk, branches of small strength holding firm. But, you are delicate, vulnerable, clinging on

until winter hardens your brittle film. For now, droplets of rain have offered your heart this reality: your tears are imagining a tree.

Maeve McKenna