Solar Eclipse
– for Janet Mullarney
Take a chance. Knock. You might be
let in through that wooden door.
Step carefully but do not be afraid.
He only wants to startle you –
peacock on the kitchen floor,
who flew from Ravenna
and landed here, to strut
below the pomegranate tree.
Indigo blue and emerald green,
this bird of linoleum marquetry –
his eye a fallen fruit, ruby red,
curious within his tiny head.
Take a chance. Go there so you may
know the quiet square, the white door
and how, after the moon has passed
between sun and earth,
sudden light will strike
the lamellae of this bird –
a thousand coloured spots
shimmering on the kitchen floor.
Poetry Ireland Review Issue 129:
Issue 129 is a fitting finale to Eavan Boland's term as editor of Poetry Ireland Review. Along with Eavan's inspirational editorial, the issue includes new poems from Eleanor Hooker, Luke Morgan, Mary Montague, Simon Ó Faoláin, Geraldine Mitchell, Brian Kirk, Dane Holt, and Supriya Kaur Dhaliwal. The titles weighed and measured by the reviewing team include new books from Mary Noonan, Tracy K Smith, Nessa O'Mahony, Susan Millar DuMars, Stephen Sexton, John W Sexton, and Eileen Sheehan, along with Thomas McCarthy's expert appraisal of Making Integral: Critical Essays on Richard Murphy, edited by Benjamin Keatinge. Ciarán O'Rourke provides an essay on William Carlos Williams, assessing his influence on Irish writing and the influence of Irish writers on the New Jersey-based poet and paediatrician. And artist Ailbhe Barret provides the landscape images for PIR 129, a stunning visual send-off for this last issue of 2019.