A candle eats away at air
At the same rate that we do

A teacher guides his pupils past headless marble torsos,
dusty cabinets of tiny Attic coins, pockmarked stylobates,
to a large clay pithos . . .

For you, with your toddler bendiness,
the squat is a natural, easy position
while I hurt-strain, thinking of miners
crouched outside their front doors

Heads under bonnets
mechanics catch a wiff
of a girl passing

        extract from The Keen Is ar scath a Chéile a mhaireann na daoine: It is in the shadow of each other we live. Watching with the dying. Travelling with the dead. Phyllida Anam-Áire; The Celtic Book of Dying, Findhorn Press, Vermont, 2022 Àite...

When The Threat of Hell Failed
God created the lanyard,

Month by month I felt my muscles harden
these hefty horns grew from my long skull

Something about arriving somewhere new
just as afternoon is leaving . . .
 

The silence and peace of this place
creeps through on birdsong.