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
Rachel Curzon
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Judith Wozniak
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Caspar Bryant
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Duncan Forbes
Pond in June Among the lily-pads’ congested leaves, above the pond, white water-lilies flower, their yellow stamens in bright asterisks like fried eggs somehow learning origami and, coloured like a childish sun or star, unblinkingly each water-lily...
Suzanne Marie Iuppa
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Josh Ekroy
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Fiona Pitt-Kethley
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Beth Brooke
Ritual To Ensure My Safe Return Home In the days before I leave I speak to the cat, explain that I must go away, specifying the number of days that she is to be left in charge. I tell her that she is being given a great responsibility to maintain...
Clive Donovan
I Am Back I am back, my love, but much has changed: They have rearranged the waters and carved a holy sink of stone and brought their own memorials which are significant to them alone. But they did not fell the ash tree, being not barbarians after all,...