Michaelmas Daisies

Majella Kelly

The fishing has finished. It is the beginning

of hunting season. It is the time to pick apples

and the time to make cider.

A lost flock of Sebastopol geese

shuffle from a pond on Stephen’s Green.

They do not know that it is Michaelmas.

Their eyes are ocean blue, their down

a flounce of soft white curls, matted

under filthy blankets and damp cardboard.

The streets are impractical

for their gaudy orange slippers. When handled

carefully, they are chatty and gregarious

but when ruffled, can be haughty and raucous.

Some gorge on blackberry cider,

sickly-sweet as if the devil himself had pissed in it.

Others place stones on their tongues,

to muffle their honking, so they can peck

undetected in the bins outside McDonald’s.

More settle in Georgian doorways,

beak under wing, with scribbled petitions

hung from their gizzards.

These geese now bedizen the city, perennially,

like the blue and purple hues of Michaelmas daisies

that grow in wayside places, with no care at all.

Poetry Ireland Review Issue 121:

Edited by Eavan Boland

Eavan Boland's first issue as editor of Poetry Ireland Review aims to encourage a conversation about poetry which is 'noisy and fractious certainly ... but a conversation nevertheless that can be thrilling in its reach and commitment'. There are new poems from Thomas McCarthy, Jean Bleakney, Wendy Holborow, Paul Perry, Aifric Mac Aodha, and many others, while the issue also includes work from Brigit Pegeen Kelly, with an accompanying essay on the poet by Eavan Boland. Eavan Boland also offers an introduction to the work of poet Solmaz Sharif, while there are reviews of the latest books from Simon Armitage, Peter Sirr, Lo Kwa Mei-en, and Vona Groarke, among others. PIR 121 also includes Theo Dorgan's elegiac tribute to his friend John Montague – a canonical poet, in contrast to the emerging poets Susannah Dickey, Conor Cleary and Majella Kelly, who contribute new work and will also read for the Poetry Ireland Introductions series as part of ILFD 2017.