Today’s choice

Previous poems

Patrick Deeley

 

 

 

 

The Inspiring

As you rummage of a morning
among dust-furred personal effects
jumbled in an old
wooden suitcase under a bed

and seeming to belong to no-one,
you find a woman
about whom the world, if it ever
supposed at all, supposed

only that she quietly got by,
has remained hidden for decades
in the shape of a book
of hand-written ballads, or in

a crackly recording
of fiddle music or song.  But what
grips is the shiver
when you realise that the stranger –

fervent, fierce,
pent-up for so long – is released,
lisping or lilting there
until the open, awoken heart

is yours and yours alone.
With a sigh you go
back to the chores of household
and haggard – but now

you can never wholly go.  You have
become altered, stirred
to loose, it will take
a lifetime, the cry of self-discovery.

 

Patrick Deeley is a poet, memoirist and children’s writer from Loughrea.  Keepsake, his eighth collection with Dedalus Press, appeared in 2024.
www.patrickdeeley.com

Irene Cunningham

Lavender seeps. I expect my limbs to leaden, lead the body down through sheet, mattress-cover, into the machinery of sleep where other lives exist.

Graham Clifford

The Still Face Experiment 

You must have seen that Youtube clip 

where a mother lets her face go dead. 

Her toddler carries on burbling for twenty to thirty seconds until she realises there is nothing coming back to her. 

Ilias Tsagas

I used to dial your number to hear your voice. I would hold the receiver for a long time as if your voice was trapped inside . . .