PPE
Published 23/04/20 on Pendemic, a website where writers are chronicling life during the Covid 19 pandemic.
Briar Patch
Published in October 2019 in the inspiring online journal Spontaneity.
Published in October 2019 in the inspiring online journal Spontaneity.
Hard Shoulder
Strange litter along the road this afternoon:
a man's slip-on shoe in beige leather.
A few miles and a couple of roundabouts on,
a woman's: black, high-heeled,
keeled over on the hard shoulder.
I try, but fail, to spin a web.
My destination drains my thoughts.
The usual too: blood-soaked coils
of badger, flaccid shards of tyre,
splayed, unfortunate crows, disintegrating cats
all sacrificed to travel's purposes which are also
mine: tearing to the hospital, coming back
hellbent, the sky full of contradiction,
a muddle of grey and lemony light.
I remember my mother saying no,
it's not going to rain. Those are just
the night-clouds coming to do their work.
From Talking the Owl Away
Strange litter along the road this afternoon:
a man's slip-on shoe in beige leather.
A few miles and a couple of roundabouts on,
a woman's: black, high-heeled,
keeled over on the hard shoulder.
I try, but fail, to spin a web.
My destination drains my thoughts.
The usual too: blood-soaked coils
of badger, flaccid shards of tyre,
splayed, unfortunate crows, disintegrating cats
all sacrificed to travel's purposes which are also
mine: tearing to the hospital, coming back
hellbent, the sky full of contradiction,
a muddle of grey and lemony light.
I remember my mother saying no,
it's not going to rain. Those are just
the night-clouds coming to do their work.
From Talking the Owl Away
Adage
Reading at Le Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris, Bloomsday 2012
It's love or the lack of it,
she said, wise hen,
when we turned up white-faced
to work in the factory,
Years of haunting the self-help shelves,
sifting for secrets;
it smoulders on. Love
or the lack of it. I'm trying it out
on all the big questions:
oil-greed, blood-lust, vertiginous shares.
If it holds, I'll write a pamphlet,
maybe start a new religion.
from Sorrow's Egg
she said, wise hen,
when we turned up white-faced
to work in the factory,
Years of haunting the self-help shelves,
sifting for secrets;
it smoulders on. Love
or the lack of it. I'm trying it out
on all the big questions:
oil-greed, blood-lust, vertiginous shares.
If it holds, I'll write a pamphlet,
maybe start a new religion.
from Sorrow's Egg
The Erratic Behaviour of Tides
This happens sometimes.
Sometimes the sea
retracts its silver bracelets from your ankles
and leaves
about its own business
(the raising of plankton,
the nudging of ships, and so forth).
Frazzled, gypsyish, trailing
slovenly shawls,
it journeys far to answer demanding lunar riddles,
leaving you,
small, and, on an enormous shore,
unadorned.
From The Erratic Behaviour of Tides
All poems on this page © Katherine Duffy
This happens sometimes.
Sometimes the sea
retracts its silver bracelets from your ankles
and leaves
about its own business
(the raising of plankton,
the nudging of ships, and so forth).
Frazzled, gypsyish, trailing
slovenly shawls,
it journeys far to answer demanding lunar riddles,
leaving you,
small, and, on an enormous shore,
unadorned.
From The Erratic Behaviour of Tides
All poems on this page © Katherine Duffy
Contact: info.katherineduffy@gmail.com