Tri Jablana
There’s a walk I do alongside a bank of the Kupa from Dubovac to Gaza then curve out into open country where before you get to the mental health institution there are three poplars – tri jablana – three poplars in a field in a lot of sky that in winter without the leaves and in the right light look like feathers so I took a picture and that snap made people look twice and thrice and ask questions I mean reality is weird because everything is in everything else which is why we see genitalia in plants and trees and why my cigarette’s smoke describes physiognomies if you think about it there should be nothing but there’s all this if you think about it flesh and magma and the universe are more unlikely than me winning the lottery twice and thrice because I am choosing from a few numbers but the lottery of trees and rivers and plenty on the planet in the system in the galaxy in the thousands and millions and billions of others is of an order which makes you cry if you think about it reality is weird when the speed of light is seven times round the Earth in one second and atoms are as empty as cathedrals so the mass of the entire human race can fit into a cherry and every breath you take contains an atom breathed out by Perry Como if you think about it what what exists is beautiful because it is complex and because it is not nothing I mean there should be nothing but there isn’t there’s all this.
Eamonn Shanahan is living in Karlovac, Croatia. He has had poems published in Magma, Nine Muses Poetry, londonart.co.uk, and had a selection of poems broadcast on Oneword Radio.