Drawn to the Light Press Issue 3

Drawn to the Light Press Issue 3 June 2021

Morris Island Lighthouse Mickey Bell

Contents Lines for a Misfit Cigarette Second Hand Across Silent Time Hedgehog Spring 2020 April under your spell Petrichor Counterpoint The Guitar Poppies in the Breeze Chaos Blindly Straight from the Tree are Best Southward An Inauguration Day Lunch Running in Circles After the Fall Meltdown look away now The end of the sky Cummings homage A Lightbulb Moment A Year in Haiku Four Haiku Brolliologist Gravity The Moon Speaks Tea at Harrods L’echarpe Marocain Wildflower Heaven Crocus Heart of the Matter Odyssey The End of the Exile The Withdrawing Room My Son, Skydiving Curlew Logic Summer High Wildflower Meadow The Beekeeper Stepping Westward, 1995 Stone Church On the moor-ridge Barrow Boating Dingle Wilds 16 – Trespassing Fish Enemies Every Memory Returns Notes on Contributors

Martin Mc Carthy Edel Hanley Jenny Byrne Edward Lee Roisin Horgan Fionn Rogan Deirdre McKernan Crosby Neal Whitman Niamh Clarke Honor Duff Alan Murphy Avril McDonnell Attracta Fahy Breda Wall Ryan Edel Burke Sven Kretzschmar Eugene Platt Kate Ennals Edward Lee S.C. Flynn Lucy Crispin Chaelio Thomas Siobhán Flynn Maeve O’Sullivan John Noonan Maresa Sheehan Siobhán Mc Laughlin Jem Henderson Carolyne Van Der Meer Jamie O’Halloran Avril McDonnell Anamaria Julia Dragomir Katy Mahon Huw Gywnn-Jones Rachel Coventry Pauline Flynn Linda McKenna Sinéad McClure Avril McDonnell Avril McDonnell Christina Hession Peter Adair Tom Driscoll David Ratcliffe Ann Marie Dunne Polly Richardson Munnelly Tamasine Plowman Edward Lee

4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51

Editorial A special thanks to Eugene Platt who sent in the cover image shot and put me in touch with its taker, Mickey Bell, who is Eugene’s cousin. Morris Island Lighthouse is the tallest lighthouse in South Carolina. Mickey writes: I got this amazing shot after seeking advice from a photographer who had gotten a great capture some years before. I stayed with Eugene and ventured out to the east end of Folly Beach very early on April 3,2013. One has to shoot to get the sunrise close to the lighthouse around April 1. It has to be close to low tide or you will get stranded. It’s about a half mile hike. I had my Nikon d800 and Nikon 70-200 heavy tripod and chair to lug. I arrived at a good spot at 5:30, set up and waited. I had no idea if success awaited me. There needed to be clouds, but not too thick. As it turned out everything was perfect in my opinion. It could have taken a dozen tries.

My raw capture was shot at 6:06 am at 140mm in 1/160 of a second, with f/14 an ISO of 4500. I used matrix metering and the image was 206.89 mb. Isn’t photoshop memory remarkable!

Once again thank you to all who submitted. Themes explored in the work include memory, love, the moon, death, time, music, the senses, journeys, and nature, certainly nature as though the pandemic has pulled us back into the earth’s softening embrace. These thoughtful subjects are sliced slivers of the soul and silvers of wordy worth. It is good to see shorter poems and the haiku alive and well. Herein are longer compositions which push the boundaries of form and expression, while remaining within the controlled craft of artful poets.

Voices from Ireland, the UK, Europe, The USA, and Canada seep together on these pages.

They are powerful whisperings to sit with, to know the inner workings of hearts and minds.

Poems. Poems are songs on the radio, heard when turned up, they are moments of expansive silence, and they are creations to be pulled from the ether, muddy monsters, sticky newborns or birds on the wing. They are daydreams and visions made real as the painter Lily Briscoe muses at the end of Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, “I have had my vision.” The swallows have returned for summer. The meadow grasses grow. Should we walk to the dunes to watch the eye of sweeping light on the bay? The ships coming in?

Orla Fay, 29/05/2021

Lines for a Misfit Resist the box, don’t let them put you in there; your soul is a fox, but one without a lair.

Resist the box, and all the petty mayhem of those who put a pox on everything that isn’t them.

Resist the box, and all the narrow views that make Fort Knox the limit of our daily news.

Resist the box, stay large and free and calmly unorthodox, in what you choose to see.

Martin Mc Carthy

4

Cigarette I couldn’t stand how every other night you were a cigarette, holding onto someone saying goodbye, yourself staying, throwing away regret with last night’s broken bottles.

I was a child when first I watched your hair, growing out, turn silver, where smoke rose each night like a whistle from kitchen to bedroom, slipping into your nightdress as a daughter might in her mother’s absence.

How your perfume tried to hide the smoke, I’ll never forget, desperate for me not to think you’d given up on giving up.

This morning I carry ashtray to bin, careful cinders don’t mar cushion or couch, trying not to breathe these familiar lies, again regretting the habit you’d had before having me.

Edel Hanley

5

Second hand for Jessica McClintock - American fashion designer 1930-2021

of time ticks by in a blur twenty-six years since we shopped for the dress.

No boutiques or department stores for us, as we scoured the phone book seeking ‘pre-loved’ stores – thrift shops back then.

You, our guide, your element bright burrowing ‘round the haunts of Town.

Frederick street, a faded awning above the flaking Georgian doorway spooked us as we climbed creaking stairs to meet the treasures you insisted were there.

Giggling our way through 80’s froth we pulled cocktail length black velvet.

Size 6, a perfect fit to make a woman of this 16-year-old lanky body, designer and you knew it, a diamond in the rough.

We had so little, but in that moment, that laughter filled day playing dress up, our tiaras catching fluorescent light, we had it all.

Jenny Byrne

6

Across Silent Time In five minutes you will be here under this ancient clock, but I would wait forever, as you know - did I not wait twenty years for this moment to come again - and yet, I know you will be here in five minutes, no second more, for while you were not waiting for me across those twenty years separating our teenage hearts from our reshaped adult hearts, you knew I would be there when you needed me to be there; if this ancient clock still held time, still ticked into the air, it would sound like a heartbeat becoming quick as the end of five minutes drew near.

Edward Lee

7

Hedgehog A pin cushion Little more Tapping Through unswept leaves On twi-lit glass Filling the vestibules of my heart With longing My titled head promising As if I knew the lock or a conifer filled den Of innate rumblings Hunger fear Like my young Climbing onto my tattered lap Ever chattering And then in an instant Settling Like a sand sculpture barely real And they not seeing The vastness The tenderness The tapping Of the lost in me.

Roisin Horgan

8

Spring 2020 The bird song was louder that year, more cats crossed the road safely, fewer pigeons were verbally abused, more dogs were walked twice a day.

The rivers were cleaner; the horses and cows that drank had their thirst quenched quicker.

The trees that cleaned the air had less diesel fumes to dispel; more lilac blossom fragrance lingered.

Daffodil day was cancelled. Spring powered ahead.

Fewer nests were made with plastic, more fledglings were overheard.

The cherry blossoms simply blossomed; fewer leaves were flattened where they fell.

The bees noticed no difference: each load of pollen was collected, buttercup, snowdrop, bluebell.

Phenomena such as rush hour ceased to be.

The school run ran no more.

Taxi ranks were empty.

Urban foxes were perplexed at the spoils of city in retreat.

Fionn Rogan

9

April Mother earth bows towards the sun Affirming its perennial renaissance.

Filling my soul with light and life, Escape winter’s cold oppressive veil.

Darkness and shadows slowly disperse The ground beneath my feet softens.

Seeds and buds breathe new life, An earth miracle, defined by destiny.

Colours abound in this season of light.

Bluebells flood forest floors.

Inspiring the artist’s lush palette.

Captured on canvas as oft’ before.

Dusting down winter’s dense cobwebs Inhale the welcome light of Spring Nurtured and invigorated under soft rain.

April, nurturer of nature. Thank you.

Deirdre McKernan Crosby

10

under your spell

open add an h drop the n my mind is made up we fit like a pair of gloves drop the g and the s warms my heart like velvet

Neal Whitman

11

Petrichor A small freckle on your top lip – belongs only to you.

The result of hours you spend hiking in the sun; the Kildare forests you love – I love in return.

Your autumn hair, your muscular arms make me nervous.

You are smarter than book smart, a mind independent, annihilates my bullshit, I’m left discombobulated.

Forever unobtainable even in my arms, I am sick with the thought of you – not seeking a cure.

Niamh Clarke

12

Counterpoint When the famous pianist shook my hand, his clasp was sure and strong.

There was a strand which echoed all day long; snatches of Chopin preludes, Schubert and Liszt scherzo-ed from hand to arm to wrist.

Piano Concertos swirled around my ear in harmony divine, and it was clear, some alchemy had made a keyboard of my spine.

Honor Duff

13

The Guitar Strumming is a casual pleasure if sometimes the F chord is fumbled.

Reaching out to grasp the neck fondly, you imagine you’ll be transported by some unexpected sequence of notes, believe you’ll be comforted; soon your fingers move without envy as for brief moments phrases tumble from its tan body, liquid treasure.

Alan Murphy

14

Poppies in the Breeze Avril McDonnell

15

Chaos One imperial summer the poppy held out, curved stem bowing to earth, it’s flower persisted, its face to the sun.

Lus mór– foxglove– spread over the garden, as if the whole world depended on pink tubular bells to call attention to which has greater importance.

An autumn evening, a butterfly with its broken wing hovers under the bulb, dims the light, shadows move, as if a ghost had entered the room.

We see the wrong always in another country, that same country looking back, the wrong in us.

All this faith in an afterlife, earth rich with ancestral bones, seeds scatter, plants shed their skin, leaves tumble, spread gold, amber, red at our feet, beginnings always meeting decay.

Today, blood red petals like tissue paper dissolve into the ground, already another shoot takes over, digitalis purpurea buds in the pot.

Now another cycle grows out from chaos gives way to a new order, we are moving in circles, one great eternal spiral, like it or not.

Attracta Fahy

16

Blindly It is only with the heart that we can see rightly, as the essence of things is not visible to the eye.

- Antoin de Saint-Exupéry, Le Petit Prince We place our fingerpads over the sockets and find not moist, flinching eyeballs but something softer, less moulded to contours extending around the head’s tropic of cancer: a night maker, stealing our light.

Running our fingers over its pile, it feline silkiness, we picture short fur, moleskin, mousepelt; sight jumps into our fingertips, reads texture and darkness hidden in unfathomable folds, cause and effect. & Tracing the braille map, our fingers cannot imagine how the terrain might touch the soles of our feet, what rock might trip us on our way, or how it bubbled up from the earth’s core, molten, then cooled to an endoskeleton to hold up all we know of the path, even the obstacles over which we stumble. & In the care home the old sailor blinded by cataracts hovers a silvery hand over two notebooks to tell red from green: one warm as skin under tropical sun, the other cool as spring grass after rain. & The bound prisoner explores the darkness inside the hood with his facial nerves: the hood is black, double-skinned against his cheeks; its weave oozes another’s coarse fear into his nostrils and he knows the hood is not made with cotton or hate, but with indifference; and he is afraid.

Breda Wall Ryan

17

Straight from the Tree are Best It seems like we are all year waiting. too many days lumbered with restraints.

The leaves have come and gone, the whoopers returned.

Who would have thought we’d be so good over distance, your courage, in the heart of the willow warbler, alone on the wing months, to reach her wintering grounds.

I see you now at a remote – your face held too close to the screen, sallow and wrinkled as the medjool you and I both love Mother, the sticky caramel sweet.

You like to doze at three, I’ll take some to share when we meet, as if in a holy month, something to break our fast.

Edel Burke

18

Southward after Rainer Maria Rilke and Element of Crime

And then came the time to store summer in a garden shed, alongside worn-out whispers of sweaty love confessions by the pool edge.

Time to take away white shirts and thongs from bath keepers, and to dress them in light grey suits of radar trap operators – their rules will remain vaguely the same.

In that time of coming cold we would not need to see each other, but see fleecy clouds melt into the sky like arctic ice into oceans.

And then comes the time for rain clouds to shed their drops down on gardens for the latter to pick up again. And, stringing my bundle, I would not have to face those looking at each other smiling, whose fingers are caught in each other’s hands. Time to accompany the falling rain, southward where fire has no form cold in the dark. The roamer’s is a portable life, made only of pass-throughs.

And solid shoes. Down a barren pathway, behind a window someone writes letters by a tiled stove.

Sven Kretzschmar

19

An Inauguration Day Lunch Better is a dinner of herbs where love is than a fatted ox and hatred with it.

- Proverbs 15:17 (RSV)

With bacon left over from breakfast, a traditional BLT seems right for a sorta light Inauguration Day lunch in the provinces far from presidential pomp.

And so I proceed, toasting twin slices of wholesome whole wheat bread to hold together, I hope, a tasty diversity of disparate parts.

I wash and slice an heirloom tomato for the T, pull from the fridge a jar of mayonnaise, and look for the lettuce, the central L, an essential ingredient of an authentic BLT. Rummaging through crisper drawers, I find withered parsley, nuts, cheese--of course, none of these is needed like lettuce, green leaves I love.

But dammit to hell, there is no such L for the otherwise unbridgeable gap between the fading big red T and the crispy true-blue B. Hungry but resigned to reality, I bite into the truncated BLT and turn on the tube in time to hear a collared priest beseech so earnestly a unity as elusive as lettuce.

Eugene Platt

20

Running in Circles for Sarah Everard

Up close, out of nowhere I saw his lips twitch, his mouth open. He uttered a guttural glug with his throat. I twisted to turn to run, but I felt his hand grab the arm of my coat, it ripped.

I lashed out, felt his grip heard his whisper not to shout.

He was police. First doubt, then relief but fear won. I ran, sprinted past houses, hedges, every night darkness.

I kicked off my heels, felt my feet touch the lines.

I thought of how when I was young I never stepped on them for fear of grizzly bears lurking around corners.

I slow down, look up, there he is with his car, holding up his badge of honour.

Kate Ennals

21

After the Fall Edward Lee

22

Meltdown The soft apologetic grey of evening squeezes me out from where I’ve sat so long safe from prying minds but close to the shimmering edge.

A gaunt and prowling night cat, I stalk these polished streets alone, meeting the face of my fear in each gleaming surface. I cringe from the masses of promised life that hunt in packs on every side; I rush back home where my mental bags are ready and waiting by the door.

I’m still not sure I’m even really here and I think that someone’s moved my things around, but my shadow nods and waves politely as it always does. The same old vulture swoops low to tear me up by the roots and beats its bloody wings around my head while it pours its sickly sweet taste in my mouth.

I sip each day from a gritty cup; outside they are many, in here I am one.

S.C. Flynn

23

look away now Ah, Spring, why did you have to show me this?

I was after one of those dipper-skimmed, purling streams, those white stars on blackthorn, and wood anemones’ gleams amongst the garlic’s juicy green; but you’re taking the piss.

I needed that new-leaf shimmer on the hawthorn, the hum of chartreuse on beech, those choose me songs in woods ringing riot with everything the heart longs for; instead you offer, in this field of new-born wobbly, few-weeks’ prancing lambs, this stricken ewe calling over and over in loud, persistent chorus as I pass, insisting I don’t intrude on that patch of bright grass where the small black body, legs still curled to caper, lies fallen.

Ah, Spring. Promise can look as promising as it damn well likes; no one’s immune from the skyfalls, the lightning strikes.

Lucy Crispin

24

The end of the sky Cummings homage It feels like we’re on different planets (clichéd I know) I Could search for other similes (metaphors.)

We were living in each other’s skin (each moment Was) charged buzzing and the hours filled up without (Us) noticing we Could look at a wall track the sunlight Tedium absent idle thoughts (But) they seemed scintillating with you Everything (Now) feels like half (or less) Too much time Exhausted Lacking your (innate) tranquilliser Withdrawal (Like) anaemia Sapped Keeps me open (awake) A dull ache.

Chaelio Thomas

25

A Light Bulb Moment Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.

- Thomas Edison

This poem is dressed in an apron and looks like housework, but the poetry is there in the corner, where a spider, fellow homemaker, gets an opportunity to escape or at least hide better.

The scent of lavender in the mop bucket washes over the terracotta tiles, and for a moment I almost remember something, something like; light blue with purple makes a change.* Later, when I rub butter into wheaten flour between my fingers it becomes the grit an archaeologist removes to uncover precious artefacts.

I discover domesticity is not important to the world of men.

Gertrude explained it all: It takes a lot of time to be a genius.

You have to sit around so much, doing nothing, really doing nothing.* Siobhán Flynn *Gertrude Stein

26

A Year in Haiku balcony garden a sprig of parsley falls into a web March sunset translucent tulip petals little tern colony – startled by a loud noise a parent takes flight picnic basket full rose garden on the wane I sneak a blackberry with each lap of the path — walking meditation in my friend’s window a trio of frost moons Zimbabwe crickets underscoring Dublin fog – evening Zoom call cool drizzle a triad of friends in the park Maeve O’Sullivan

27

Four Haiku

Your wet clay footprints fill with rainwater, the field follows you home

Barbeque embers darkening dying glow a sudden breeze of sunset

A swan slides away from reeds his present, a drifting memory

Spill of toys in yard children returned to class stillness

John Noonan

28

Brolliologist Delighted by their steel elbows and shoulders under taut stretched skin, their handles, proud ferrules.

The tegestologist slipping his beer mats into the plastic pockets of his album.

Staring, mesmerising her with brown empty eyes, she'll only touch their curly fur to re-arrange them, the artophile’s teddy bears, ancient and perfect.

The helixophile twists his oldest corkscrew in the palm of his hand, imagining the pull and grip of it against the cork.

Patient, proud, beautiful collections.

But won't the umbrella miss the applause and stomping feet of the rain, and what if the wind changes and Mary Poppins misses her ride because it was neatly folded in a display stand?

Don't teddies need to be suffocated with snuggles under duvets, fed toast with jam, their fur sticking to it?

A sogging wet and shredded beer mat must feel job satisfaction when a couple leave together?

And if the tip of a corkscrew can't sip a Rioja on a Saturday night, well what's the point of it?

Maresa Sheehan

29

Gravity Long ago, when the earth from some cataclysmic collision cast aside its heart, there was born the moon.

Far-flung, the heart hardened to rock, barren birthplace of pain.

And kept its tethered distance.

Years it orbited its planet home, content in cratered hurt, the shock of separation borne aloft, alone.

Tide-puller, tear-keeper, melancholy muse-maker.

Satellite ghost of loss.

Yet amidst its scarred terrain the Ocean of Storms, the Sea of Rain there was named: Sea of tranquillity Sea of fecundity Sea of nectar.

Love, can never just die away.

Now the moon's face gazes luminous at the earth in nightly wounded wonder, knows there is no way back.

Yet honours the gravity between them, spinning on an axis of unending light.

Siobhán Mc Laughlin

30

The Moon Speaks Last night, he snuck in through my window round and fat, cackling like a magpie.

Grabbed me by my pixie hair, whispered that he doesn't love me, my mother doesn't, my child doesn't, how could he when I'm such a dreadful parent, only playacting through video games and chalk drawings of sunshines and rabbits on the pavement.

My mother looks at me, fat cheeked, pig eyed, smiles her greased smile as I pile up sweets, custard creams, endless cups of weak black tea, the skin from my thighs and forearms, Lego blocks that make up the last of my sanity, the smile from my face, a million hours of tears, all on the plate before her and she gobbles it up a black hole, a void I can't fill until I wake up sweating, the moon slinking out, back to his sky and his darkness, leaving me and my emptied chest with nothing but the sad cry-catch of tears trapped in my throat.

Jem Henderson

31

Tea at Harrods I promise to meet her in Piccadilly Circus We’ll go to Harrod’s buy tea-things have a cuppa Rain threatens I know she hates to get her hair wet after an expensive trip to the coiffeur I know she’ll have an umbrella even an extra fold-up version in some hidden compartment in her handbag where she could stash the goods for a getaway Still I wished I’d picked her up When I spot her outside the station she looks tired lost I’m shocked by her appearance normally choreographed elle a pris un coup de vieux but I convince myself it’s the dreary weather the dark light casting a shadow across her face At Harrods she begs off a shopping spree pleads for a rest on a nearby bench a cup of double bergamot Earl Grey breath shallow cold Maybe her years are catching her But memories glisten in her clouded eyes a fading image of her son at the Bataclan that night Paris, she says Novembre 2015 Le temps aujourd’hui est pareil Carolyne Van Der Meer

32

L’echarpe Marocain Scarf, you flew in from Morocco Disguised as Africa’s sky yolked With Saharan clouds. You slid out of Marakesh and stowed away On a westbound jet to land Around my neck. Your Mediterranean Silk grazes the meadow of my skin and I am in your mosque all Mosaic and blue. Muezzin, you Call me from your minaret To a different prayer. Your holy sea Where I dive deep, deeper, deep.

Jamie O’Halloran

33

Wildflower Heaven Avril McDonnell

34

Crocus Dark untamed earth, impersonal, unjudging, who made you drink up and swallow in the light on which you chew and spit back out in colors of touch and smell and hearing and sight?

Are these ordained, or sprouts of pure randomness?

So visceral, but equally sublime, forged deep in furnaces of stars, mysterious alchemic artistry, do we from these result?

We harm your flesh by walking over you?

I see a swelling bump, and from beneath the dry crushed leaves a perfumed bruise shows up.

Anamaria Julia Dragomir

35

Heart of the Matter for my father, Derek Mahon Sometimes I submit to the similarity between us, accepting the owlish, watchful eyes, and even the thoughts wedged behind the high brow.

Sometimes it’s the mannerism of slightly jutting jaw in thought, or the flicker of muscle in the cheek, taut in response to others’ words.

You were often a good listener, keen to know how others felt about a book, an article, even a joke uttered tongue in cheek.

And that’s what made us unique, united through an unspoken accord despite the broken cord you effected when I was nine.

What is established by Gaia below – a root begun and nourished, turning to flourishing flower – cannot be ignored.

And so our roots delved deep into the earth, connecting eye, cheek and bone, and our shoots infused the macrocosm with words unspoken while you were alive.

Katy Mahon

36

Odyssey In the early light the dewlight of rustling leaves before all sense of a settled earth is a decision a notion of freedom and odyssey and the road ahead when I move everything moves around me the future dances unruly in my hair yet when I arrive at the place of grazing herds and call it home and do the things of well-fed men I find it blighted leap to my feet and stride again into falcons’ wind in search of another Ithaca.

Huw Gwynn-Jones

37

The End of the Exile I left the world of men incognito; wrapped in my flesh, my sunglasses, my shawls, in navy and black, wrapped tight in my rage.

I went to live in my mother’s house, made meals three times a day, morsels for women, delicate things.

I scraped ashes from the grate. Years passed.

When the carers came to tend to my mother we talked of female concerns; the foolishness of men. The foolishness of men is always the same be they Irish, Ghanaian, or Lithuanian. We laughed the knowing laugh of women.

When my mother passed away I was left with the dog, a gentle bitch but not enough to maintain the femaleness of this place, and quite unexpectedly, I left my exile, as a swimmer strides back into the cold bay.

I kissed him very deeply, lowered myself in.

Rachel Coventry

38

The Withdrawing Room Inside the castle, I wander airless apartments, and enter a room different from the rest – the women’s withdrawing room.

On hand-painted Chinese wallpaper a fawn walks along a path, a parrot rests in a peony tree.

I lose myself in the garden, sit on the blue glazed seat by the lotus pond, eat a persimmon picked from the tree overhead, listen to the song of the yellow-tailed bird on the osmanthus, follow the butterfly hovering over the rock.

I stand here in my winter coat, the room bare of furniture, wallpaper veiled in a patina of age, at home in this female domain, in undisturbed delight, from the world outside.

Pauline Flynn

39

My Son, Skydiving If every mother knows to sew pomegranate seeds into the seams of her daughter’s dresses, she knows to keep her son’s eyes to the ground, shield him from matches and the patterns of clouds, show him the entrails of birds killed by neighbourhood cats. But daily, unthinkingly, I led you across the threshold of long empty cages, past nail-studded doors; drew rusty bolts in and out of their chiselled pockets, thought you safely cocooned in the womb. Until under my feet, the wind vibrated the echo of a shriek, made you leap, turn a complete somersault in your amniotic sac, acquainting you fatally with the lure of acrobatics, the feather float of ghosts.

Linda McKenna

40

Curlew Logic I'm a curlew With my cew, cew cur—lee—cur—lee whistle and my long legs and cur—vey beak I'm a curlew That's me behind the thistle, looking dappled and rather sleek I'm a curlew With my cew, cew cur—lee—cur—lee whistle And my currycomb shaped eyes I'm a curlew a cursed curlew With a curvilinear point of view curt but cautious with my curlicue beak I'm a curlew don't forget me If it's curiosity you seek.

Sinéad McClure

41

Summer High Flashing sparks and diving larks Bees and butterflies Dancing colours in and out Light and sunbeams high White fluff floating in the air Feathery balls alight Drifts of snow land everywhere Dancing in delight The light and dreams of life are high Kaleidoscope in motion Continuous movement in the air Dazzling in devotion Avril McDonnell

Wildflower Meadow Avril McDonnell 42

The Beekeeper Swallowed by his jumper, he slipper shuffles along the cracked concrete path.

Papery palms - used to taking the strain on a tug o'war team, struggle to turn the handle, on an Aladdin's Cave he doesn't remember building.

A hodge podge of cobwebby tools, his bee suit and smoker.

He mines the memory, clouded eyes twinkle - his cellophaned honey section in Centra and a woman's finger in it.

Christina Hession

43

Stepping Westward, 1995 Tramping that headland where the sheep bleat and gulls screech, I’d be rock and air, sea and sky, a nothing in the mist; I’d be the corncrake clack-clacking, a fly flitting over the stream – anything, anything to forget his gasping for breath after breath after breath, his hand shaking, dropping a glass, his blind feet stumbling in the dark.

Peter Adair

44

Stone Church I venture no more than a low whisper, afraid I’ll startle the people of heaven.

- Li Po

The one stark gable form stands reminder a roof once sheltered worship there where, now, sky spills in.

Weed, tough slender stalks of it, and other softer, finer wild grasses grow either side of a worn threshold.

Stone masons, so long ago, carved fluted casing into the dark wall, this coarse granite smoothed at the small entrance off to one side of what had been the altar.

My father came forty years ago driven to the site on his own.

Standing at the doorway, looking in at what was no longer there, he’d realized this strange sense of scale, the stature of men a thousand years — five hundred generations — back.

I think he said it was raining, cold, the wind was up.

Telling me, he always tried to capture the mix of comedy and awe. History. Absent tracing the doorframe his hand had found one place smoother — more polished than the rest — where so many had touched the stone that same place as softly, just as elsewhere-minded as he was, fixed or trying to fix on prayer in whatever language, the blessings of different years, saint names, grief and its rote consolations — or only steadying themselves as they stepped across a width of stone the color of pale flesh, wet with rain.

Tom Driscoll

45

On the moor-ridge A warm breeze caressed the moor-ridge murmuring in my ears as I angled toward the summit of a favoured mound.

Once there I lay watching a forever sky; the moons edge illuminated the finale of a rash of stars black, grey fading, a fire burning through it.

My eyes followed the horizon toward an emerging sun that turned cotton grass into lighted bulbs.

With eyes half-closed in gleam a deathly roar shook the silence it was predatory, authoritative, yet lonesome.

I gripped bracken, sat upright and there it stood above the quarry top, a Stag framed in orange. with extraordinary branches spreading from its head, It was magnificent, close enough to outrun me near enough to admire.

I felt no fear.

There was a scurry in a clump of grass, then the pale brown flash of a Hare or a Rabbit, or some mythological creature sent by the Stag to turn me back?

I stayed awhile for as long as a moment could last watching its majesty, staring in obedience.

The sun chased darkness, waking hills on the far side of the valley as the beast followed its shadow fading into memory.

David Ratcliffe 46

Barrow Boating after Du Fu

Waiting for “Sale Agreed”, here in my dream home.

Heart sore, I wander the rooms, reading their stories.

But today, I’m his girlfriend on the barge, learning to throw ropes on the Bisto brown Barrow.

Damsel flies entwine in azure ecstasy on the reeds.

A couple of buzzards cavort and soar in slow circles.

We moor up and dine in deckchairs by the campfire.

Mirrored in the river, we are silvered by the stars.

Ann Marie Dunne

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Dingle Wilds 16 - Trespassing Fish

Remembering Mondays, cockle steam decorating windows those shoes askew eternally damp with morning tides encrusted with shoreline’s hearts, glittering, just there.

I and moon are one, watching morn, the evolution.

Lone bladderwrack sits perfectly still on tongue, As if loaning itself to Shakespeare; act 2, line 1200 organic kiss synthetic harboured catching sun slinking in and you dripping butter fusions, garlic marrying mango, I sculpt furiously in mind to hold for Thursday’s vigil and tidal blessings of merlot’s seduction seeping further into Atlantic salt seasoning sands and tales of once a walrus came to Kerry on echoes of solitary dolphin clicks dispersed amongst turning tides washing up what ifs what ifs among the decaying common yellow corpses spat out with shells.

Polly Richardson Munnelly

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Enemies A friendship is a diamond cast in the unique clasp of your heart But how beautiful is the Pearl That coated in layers and years of defensive barriers Once freed Shines full of iridescent colours So can our Enemies be realised by our love Tamasine Plowman

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Every Memory Returns Edward Lee

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Notes on Contributors Peter Adair’s poems have appeared in The Honest Ulsterman, PN Review, Poetry Ireland Review, Boyne Berries, The Bangor Literary Journal, The Poets’ Republic and other journals and anthologies. He has been shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing. He lives in Bangor, Co Down.

Mickey Bell was born in Columbia and grew up in Florence, South Carolina. He graduated from the College of Charleston, and the seminary at Emory. He served for forty-four years in ministry in the UMC all over SC. His main hobbies were music and tennis. He always enjoyed photography but took it more seriously with the end of his tennis career. He studied art at USC taking most of their photography courses and he has participated in several photo groups. He enjoys all aspects of digital photography but gravitates to wildlife captures.

Edel Burke lives in Castlebar, Co. Mayo. She was the winner of Dromineer Poetry Competition 2017, and she was highly commended by iYeats Poetry 2017. She has been published in Something About Home, New Writing on Migration and Belonging, Crannóg, Boyne Berries, Banshee, The Cormorant, The Rush Anthology.

New to the writing scene and enjoying the practice of it and the community very much, Jenny Byrne engages with writing as her creative way to process aspects of life around her and her experience. Her poems have been published in The Galway Review and Impspired.

Niamh Clarke is from Dundalk. Her interests include veganism, walking, cooking, writing, reading and keeping healthy. She is interested in form and the musicality of poetry, the playful side of language (indulges in the odd pun), and feels she is always trying to develop her voice and place through poetry.

Rachel Coventry’s poems have appeared in The North, The Moth, Poetry Ireland Review, Stand, The Irish Times, The Shop, and have featured on RTE Lyric FM. She holds a PhD in philosophy from the National University of Ireland, Galway. Her debut collection Afternoon Drinking in the Jolly Butchers (2018) is published by Salmon poetry.

Lucy Crispin is a former Poet Laureate of South Cumbria. She’s been published widely in print and online, most recently in Poetry Birmingham, Speckled Trout, Anthropocene, Pennine Platform and Channel. Her pamphlets wish you were here and shades of blue are published by Hedgehog Press.

Find out more at lucycrispin.com.

Deirdre McKernan Crosby lives in Greystones Co. Wicklow. Her first published poem, Uninvited Guest appeared in 2019 in Bray Arts Journal. Her work is also published in Boyne Berries Literary Journal, The Blue Nib and Pendemic.ie. Her poem There Will Be Time – Cancer & Covid-19 is preserved in the Irish Poetry Reading Archive, UCD Library. Her most recent published work Diary 1952 was read as part of Poetry Day Ireland 2021.

Anamaria Julia Dragomir came from Romania to find a home away from home here in Ireland. She has studied Philology, Literature and Philosophy. She has started to write verse in a moment of overwhelming sensitivity and is hoping to touch the borders of literature.

Tom Driscoll lives in Framingham, Massachusetts USA with his wife, artist Denise Driscoll.

He’s published several collections of poems, most recently ‘Odd Numbers’ (2017).

Honor Duff is a member of the Cavan-Meath Lit-Lab Writers Group, has been published in various journals including Boyne Berries, Crannóg Magazine, The Stony Thursday Book, and Skylight 47.

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Ann Marie Dunne lives in Co. Kildare. She is currently a (very!) mature student at Carlow College doing a degree in Arts & Humanities. She loves hiking, boating and being in nature. She is unpublished and trying to hone her skills in poetry Kate Ennals is a board member of Irish PEN/PEN na h'Éireann. Her collections include At the Edge (Lapwing), Threads (Lapwing), and Elsewhere (forthcoming from Salmon Poetry).

Attracta Fahy Psychotherapist, MA.Writing NUIG. October winner in Irish Times New Irish Writing 2019, Pushcart, Best of Web nominee, shortlisted for Over The Edge New Writer 2019, Allingham Poetry festival 2019 & 2020. Fly on the Wall Poetry published her debut chapbook collection Dinner in the Fields, in March’20.

Pauline Flynn is a Visual Artist/Poet and has an MA in Creative Writing from University College Dublin, Ireland. She was shortlisted for the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award in 2010 and is published in various literary journals including Skylight 47, Boyne Berries, Sixteen Magazine, Irl. Light, a Journal of Photography and Poetry, NY, Orbis 81, and The Blue Nib, UK. S.C. Flynn was born in Australia of Irish origin and now lives in Dublin. His poetry has recently been published in Cyphers and Abridged.

Siobhán Flynn has been placed and shortlisted in a number of poetry competitions including the Hennessy New Irish Writing Award. Her poetry has appeared in anthologies and literary journals, including Visual Verse, The Pickled Body, Amsterdam Quarterly and The Poetry Bus. She is working towards her first collection.

Edel Hanley is currently researching for a PhD in women’s war writing at University College Cork.

She has recently been awarded an Irish Research Council Postgraduate Award for her research in October 2020. Edel regularly hosts poetry and short story writing courses for gifted children alongside the Centre for Talented Youth Ireland (CTYI) and her poetry and fiction have previously been published in Crannog Magazine, #mentalhealthformillennials, New Writer’s Café Magazine, and Quarryman Literary Journal.

Jem Henderson is a nonbinary queer poet living in Leeds, UK. They have an MA in Creative Writing from York St. John University. They have been published in Civic Leicester's Black Lives Matter anthology, Streetcake, Full House and Dreich. They can be found on twitter and instagram @jem_face. They're working on their first collection.

Christina Hession is a native of Dunmore, Co Galway. She has been published in Boyne Berries, Vox Galvia, Bangor Literary Journal, Ropes and The Honest Ulsterman. Christina holds an MA in Creative Writing from UCC. Roisin Horgan lives in West Clare on the Shannon Estuary. She works as a mediator and writes constantly. She is inspired by her surroundings and the manner in which nature can bring emotion to the surface, bringing healing if not closure. She has four children and loves to garden. This is her first publication.

Huw Gwynn-Jones comes from a line of published poets in the Welsh bardic tradition, but until his recent retirement to Orkney, had never penned a line himself. He now writes to find a different way of hearing the world, and has poems accepted by Eunoia Review, Amethyst Review and Dreich Magazine.

Sven Kretzschmar is a prize-winning poet from Germany. His poetry has been published widely in Europe and overseas, among other outlets in Writing Home. The ‘New Irish’ Poets (Dedalus Press, 2019), Hold Open the Door (UCD Press, 2020), Voices 2020 (Cold River Press, 2020) The Irish Times, and Das Gedicht.

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Edward Lee is an artist and writer from Ireland. His paintings and photography have been exhibited widely, while his poetry, short stories, non-fiction have been published in magazines in Ireland, England and America, including The Stinging Fly, Skylight 47, Acumen and Smiths Knoll. He is currently working on two photography collections: 'Lying Down With The Dead' and 'There Is A Beauty In Broken Things'. He also makes musical noise under the names Ayahuasca Collective, Orson Carroll, Lego Figures Fighting, and Pale Blond Boy. His blog/website can be found at https://edwardmlee.wordpress.com Katy Mahon is working on two, as yet unpublished pamphlets, and a collaboration with English seascape artist Carolyn Coles. Katy is a member of Wednesday Wordship workshops in Yorkshire, and she has a poem being published in the inaugural edition of Dublin-based The Liminal Review later this year.

Martin Mc Carthy was born in Co. Waterford, Ireland, He now lives in Cork, and is a graduate of UCC, where he studied English. He is at present working on his first full-length collection, titled Lockdown., which is due to be published by Three Spires Press in 2021.

Sinéad McClure is a writer, radio producer, and illustrator. Her poetry has been published on Poethead, Live Encounters ~ Poetry & Writing, Crossways Literary Journal, The Cabinet of Heed, Dodging the Rain, StepAway Magazine and The Ekphrastic Review. Sinéad has also written 15 dramas for the National Radio Children's Service, RTEjr Radio on the themes of conservation and Ireland’s natural heritage. She often revisits these themes in her work and has a particular interest in wildlife conservation. In March 2021 Sinéad won the Ó Bhéal International Five Words Poetry Competition. Sinéad lives in rural County Sligo, with her husband and their two border collies.

Avril McDonnell lives in Douglas, Cork. She has a great interest in nature and animal welfare. New to painting she has been exploring styles over the last ten months. She dapples in all areas of art and crafts but favours painting with acrylics. Her style is loose, abstract, and drawn to painting wildflowers. Her other interests include gardening, writing (poetry and short stories) and singing.

Linda McKenna’s debut poetry collection, In the Museum of Misremembered Things, was published

by Doire Press in 2020. The title poem won the An Post/Irish Book Awards, Irish Poem of the Year. In 2018 she won the Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing and the Red Line Festival Award. She has had poems published in a variety of publications including, Poetry Ireland Review, Banshee, The North, The Honest Ulsterman, Crannóg.

Siobhán Mc Laughlin is a poet from Co. Donegal, Ireland. She has a MA in Creative Writing and is a creative writing facilitator. Her poems have been published in The Honest Ulsterman, The Ekphrastic Review, Quince magazine, The Poetry Village, Bealtaine magazine and Drawn to the Light Press. Twitter: @siobhan347.

Polly Richardson Munnelly currently lives and writes in Dingle, Co. Kerry, Ireland. Co-host & MC for Impspired lit mag poetry nights, she continues to run groups the Bulls Arse Writers & Worldly Worders remotely. She has been published both nationally and internationally. Her collection Winter’s Breath is available on Amazon.

Alan Murphy is the Waterford-based writer and illustrator of four collections of poetry for children and teenagers. He has been featured in books of the year articles in the Irish Times and twice shortlisted for the CAP awards for independent authors. He has also contributed poetry and visual art to numerous outlets and anthologies and writes for Inis magazine.

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John Noonan is a member of Dundalk Writers. His work has been published in magazines and journals in Ireland and the U.S. He has been shortlisted in many competitions and is a winner of the Goldsmith Poetry Award.

Jamie O’Halloran is an American poet who lives in the West of Ireland. Her poems appear most recently in Crannóg, One Hand Clapping, The Honest Ulsterman, The Night Heron Barks and The Galway Review. Her poetry reviews are in Lit Pub and Tupelo Quarterly.

Maeve O'Sullivan works in further education in Dublin. Her poetry and haikai have been widely published and anthologized. She is the author of four collections from Alba Publishing, with a fifth forthcoming in June 2021. Maeve is a member of the Hibernian Poetry Group, leads haiku workshops, and reviews for various journals. Twitter @writefromwithin.

Eugene Platt lives in Charleston, South Carolina, with his wife Judith, corgi Bess, and cats Finnegan and Maeve. He holds a Diploma in Anglo-Irish Literature from Trinity College Dublin. His poems have appeared in Poetry Ireland Review, Boyne Berries, Capella, etc. Revival Press published his collection Nuda Veritas in 2020.

Tamasine Plowman is a 44 years young mum & multi- instrumentalist musician, based in Limerick.

She has run a music school in Castletroy for 6 years and is currently part of the NCH female conductors programme. She has written poetry throughout her life starting back as a teenager, whilst studying at Chethams school of music Manchester. She has always found words, like music, a powerful tool to express life and its journey.

David Ratcliffe is a poet, playwright, short story writer from the north west of England. He has been published in a number of magazines both on-line and in print. In 2016 his poem ‘Home Straight’ featured at the Fermoy International Festival. The stage play ‘Intervention’ was produced for World Peace Day. His poem ‘He Crawled’ was placed third for the Pushcart Prize in the Blue Nib magazine in 2018. In 2018 his poem ‘Pour me a Vision’ featured in VatsalaRadhakeesoon.wordpress.com for Dylan Thomas Day. Originally from Clare, Fionn Rogan is a senior researcher in climate and energy policy and modelling in University College Cork.

Breda Wall Ryan lives in Bray, Co. Wicklow. Internationally published, her awards include The Gregory O’Donoghue International Poetry Prize, and Dermot Healy International Poetry Award. A founder member of Hibernian Poetry, her collections, both from Doire Press, are In a Hare’s Eye (Shine/Strong Award 2016), and Raven Mothers (2018).

Maresa Sheehan's writing has/will appear in The Irish Times, Poetry Ireland Review, BlackBough Poetry, Dodging the Rain, Boyne Berries, Dreich Poetry. Winner Goldsmith Poetry Competition, second Westival Poetry Competition 2020, HC: Bridport, Over The Edge, Hungry Hill, Fool for Poetry Competitions. Shortlisted: Fish Lockdown Prize, Cuirt Poetry Prize, Allingham Competition.

Chaelio Thomas is a writer from Dublin, Ireland who teaches at second level and enjoys vintage fashion. She has been published on Headstuff.org, Tales From the Forest, Visual Verse, The Honest Ulsterman, The Mondegreen and the Olentangy Review. She is mainly focussing on poetry at the moment despite writing short stories and radio plays in the past. She tweets @Jenanifur.

Carolyne Van Der Meer lives and writes in Montreal, Canada. She has three published books, Motherlode: A Mosaic of Dutch Wartime Experience Journeywoman and Heart of Goodness: The Life of Marguerite Bourgeoys in 30 Poems. Another collection, Sensorial, is forthcoming from Inanna in 2021. Her poetry has been published internationally.

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Neal Whitman lives with his wife, Elaine, a mile from Monterey Bay where they watch the tide go out and see what remains. In the debris, he finds images and ideas for his poems. He took up the profession of poetry when he retired from the profession of teaching. Publications and awards have exceeded his expectations.

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