Teeming Down
The winter afternoon has ebbed away by five.
Out past the range of the streetlights
the hills are massed like chickens asleep in a coop,
the mountain road is a tightrope.
The wind urges the car.
We drive under the door of the woods
and it’s just the marine life of the dashboard lights.
There’s something heavy in the rain,
more than leaves or debris, building
into a thick batting at the windows.
You drop down into second and then we see them stick
and smear on the windscreen their scales and bluish blood,
their fins not finding purchase anywhere,
dumbly bombarding the shocked acres of bracken.
I see a high tide pressing on the sunroof,
us capsized and cast away –
but then it lifts, leaving us on four wheels,
gaping through sodden hair.
The run-off thins the silver from the road.
By day, no fish in trees, the mountain as it was.
Poetry Ireland Review Issue 119:
Poetry Ireland Review Issue 119 includes new poems by 48 poets including Frank Ormsby, John Kinsella, Rachel Coventry, Aifric Mac Aodha, Gerald Dawe, Alice Miller and Claire Potter. Also included are translations by Richard Begbie and Kirsten Lodge, an essay on Bishop, Lowell, Heaney and Grennan by David McLoghlin, and reviews of Paul Muldoon, Paul Durcan, Sarah Clancy, Medbh McGuckian, Kate Tempest, George the Poet, and many more. The issue also features photography by Hugh O'Conor, Dominic Turner, Sheila McSweeney, Fergus Bourke and John Minihan.