The Persistence of Time

New Year Sunset, December 2019

Happy New Year to all reading. I hope that 2020 will bring you health and happiness. I've written a poem today to mark the end of an often difficult decade. When I went for a walk earlier I saw a lady in a red coat in the distance and that was the seed of the poem. A quick thank you to Dodging the Rain, The Pickled Body and Atrium Poetry who recently published my work.

The Persistence of Time

I wonder if she is more a future figure than a past,

this lady of the year, in a red coat festive stepping

around the corner that stretches to a decade-long length of road?

It is only when she is out of view that I wonder.

I do remember when the 80s became the 90s,

all that revolution, and when the 90s turned millennium.

2009 was an ice-cube in the Harvey Wallbanger of the 2010s.

It is only when she is out of view that I wonder.

This late afternoon could be an abstract of time,

its dreary sky combined with misting rain makes tree-clocks.

Dull, surreal faces spin about bare branch tops.

It is only when she is out of view that I wonder.

The big hand spire of the church takes me back

to Christmas morning, the sleepy mass, hymns

dreamlike, the intoxication of cloying incense.

It is only when she is out of view that I wonder.

Now I have the present and a different communion,

those walking whose spirits flicker like candle flames

in the oppressiveness of the day with chants of greeting

“A Happy New Year to you!”

The religiosity of life lays itself down for my attention,

a path both worn and unworn unknown.

Salvador Dali, musing, strokes his giant moustache before me.

When she is out of sight it is troubling to consider

that the past is the future in a rear-view mirror.

Orla Fay

A Poem for November

My poem November Roots appeared in Quarryman Five published April past. The literary journal of UCC is currently looking for submissions to issue Six.

November Roots had its origin in that Edna O'Brien quote "In a way winter is the real spring, the time when the inner things happen, the resurge of nature." When November arrives I also always think of Frost's My November Guest, "My sorrow, when she's here with me/ Thinks these dark days of autumn rain/Are beautiful as days can be..."

This is also a poem for anyone out stargazing.

November Roots

Leaving the town, the church bell grown 

to a dull clang wrings out eleven o’clock.

Into mid-November I am walking,

a countryside grown sparse,

though in fact it is dying

and I wonder at what point

is the scales tipped

from one to the other?

How almost vernal the day

becomes in the height of the afternoon

sun stretching its greatest yawn

before setting, the night a shadow

gracing the day time land,

the white and pale blue sky,

marking the bare branches, so smooth

stripped outrageously for the buds of new year.

A silence has fallen on the woods,

the hunter’s gunshot resounds,

the pheasant is startled, the dog unsure.

The moon appears, a fat thumb print

and the stars a trail of breadcrumbs

to the deepest night, an all covering

canopy of midnight pricked with silver.

What if the whole of space

is a river of time and the stars

the sunlight bouncing off its ripples

and currents, dark water, deep space?

I feel closest then to my ancestors,

minutiae of the universe,

hypnotised, rooted to the spot, eyes gazing

upwards, entranced by the heavens

but a thing of gravity. My mantra:

I am of the earth, I am of the earth,

I am of the earth, I am of the earth…

Orla Fay

21st Francis Ledwidge Poetry Award

Delighted to have a poem Highly Commended here. Well done to all on the list.

The Burial of Alice de Fir

The Burial of Alice de Fir published again in Meath Writers' Circle 5th Annual Magazine, an old poem that's a fave for some.

Meath Writers' Circle 5th Annual Magazine Launch

It was a very enjoyable evening in Trim Castle Hotel for this launch yesterday. I captured some video footage and took a couple of photos. Congratulations to Frank Murphy, editor, and to Willie Hodgins who acted as compere for the event.

Frank Murphy One Man, Senator Edward M. Kennedy

 Michael Farry reads Stained Glass St. Patrick's Trim

James Linnane reads The Thinking

Willie Hodgins and Frank Murphy in pensive mood

Launch of Meath Writers' Circle 5th Annual Magazine

 

Frank Murphy

The 5th Annual Magazine of Meath Writers' Circle will be launched on Thursday next, 7th November at 7.30 pm in Trim Castle Hotel. The launch will be performed by Frances Tallon of The Meath County Library Service. The magazine is edited by Frank Murphy. I have a small piece included. It is sure to be an entertaining night.

Recently I was highly commended for poetry in The Jonathan Swift Creative Writing Awards, Saggart, Co. Dublin. I was also pleased to have my Bailieborough Poetry Prize shortlisted poem included in the October issue of the Honest Ulsterman.

Jean O'Brien to Launch Boyne Berries 26

Jean O'Brien

Poet Jean O'Brien will launch Boyne Berries 26 on Thursday, 24th October at 8 pm in The Castle Arch Hotel, Trim. Contributors to the magazine will read on the night. Tea and coffee will be served. All welcome. 

Jean O’Brien’s fifth collection, Fish on a Bicycle: New and Selected Poems, was reprinted by Salmon Poetry in October 2018. Her poem ‘Merman’ won the Arvon International in 2010. In 2017 she was awarded the Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship and was recently shortlisted in the Voices of War Competition run by UCD.

Jean's poem ‘Once I Woke’ can be read here.