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Danger in low-lying areas

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Selected poems

  

Deliver us from evil

Faces alight, heads bowed, kneeling

Thumbing shiny orbs from right to left

Counting their blessings, prostrating

Lamenting their losses, pleading

 

Standing, ears burning for the words

Spewing in unending streams

From the new pulpit

Wild-eyed pontificates professing

 

The good, the bad, the immortal struggle

How to arm yourself for a shifting world order

Where darkness gives way

To a pixellated light

 

A new religion for our children

 

 

Danger in low-lying areas

For months I watched

blue light in the darkness

small minds spill out small words

small hands spread and reach

to bend, warp, break

all that could be, should be great

 

For days I passed

the black screen

berating and blaming

the mass-entertaining

hooked on a loop, counting down

to more incoming footage

 

And here now in the grey light

comes the dawn

what if we are not seeking ruin

but searching the ruins

for a hand

battered and bruised

 

broad-backed, mud-slicked

bent but unbroken

reaching out of the mire

to catch a pale light

against the still

dark sky

 

 

 

The scattering

Defaced pages ripped

From a family scrapbook

Papers not in order

Dislodged leaves

Scattered on the breeze

Sister, brother and one other

Still unfolding in the mother

A short story barely begun

A father creased and worn

Tattered epic torn

A sad symphony drawn

From ragged notes

Folklore recycled

Over and over in

Candlelit sanctuaries

Where happier stories

Nestled between soft covers

Once upon a time

 

 

 

 

Anne CaseyAnne Casey is an award-winning Irish-Australian writer/literary editor with work featured internationally in newspapers, magazines, journals, books, podcasts, broadcasts, videos and music albums. Her writing/poetry rank in The Irish Times newspaper's most-read. In 2017, Salmon Poetry published Anne's poetry collection, where the lost things go. She tweets as @1annecasey

Topic tags: poetry, Anne Casey

 

 

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Existing comments

I found ‘the scattering’ reflecting dislodgement from hearth and home, as in, the great potato famine and other woes, seeping through from an Irish heart; very moving.


Kevin Walters | 15 April 2018  

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