Live Encounters Poetry & Writing 16th Anniversary Volume Two
November- December 2025
Grace, poems by Jean O’Brien.
Grace
Even now, in this delicious noisy quiet,
in this place where nature rules,
flies buzz, bees drone, birds go about their day
singing till sundown, sometimes
I long for the background thrum of city noise,
the ceaseless throb of traffic, raucous gulls
tormenting the skies, alarms and ambulances
competing for prominence. The breaking
and shattering of air causing pandemonium,
not to mention the regular ding of the Luas
tram pulling out from the station,
the ping of yet another notification
from our phones, the clatter of
supermarket trollies bashing together.
Sometimes you need discord
to remind you of grace.
Reading the National Geographic
Magazine as a child.
The cover yellow, as a hazard warning,
lured me to read the fat pile of magazines.
Sent to Granny’s to do homework
and bored with maths I didn’t understand
I flicked the illuminated pages filled
with strange lands, lush Amazon forests,
not yet denuded back then;
saw people with sticks through their noses,
Myanmar women with elongated ringed necks.
They revealed the world as a wonderous place
and offered more interest
than my well-thumbed school books,
that seemed designed to keep us
inside the margins of a limited life.
We were shown pictures in history class
of the Irish famine and impoverished lives
on the Blasket Islands. The National
Geographic said Africa was a dust bowl,
our books showed Irish missionaries
bringing religion to these far flung place.
I flicked the shiny pages of the magazine
almost blinded by flocks of neon green
parrots, orange fire raining from volcanoes
and oceans so blue they were hard to believe.
I studied my atlas, followed the convoluted
course of rivers feeding the Amazone basin,
fingertip traced the river Nile travelling
through Africa and Egypt until it emptied
into the Mediterranean sea. Eventually
granny called me for tea.
As I sat amongst egg sandwiches, doilies
and delicate china I imagined they were
yams and prickly fruits and felt
I had travelled so far over hazardous
terrain that my mind had stretched
like those women’s necks
and would never shrink so small again.
Furniture
Discarded like an ill-fitting coat,
vignettes or maquettes of peoples
lives on the street, remnants of a
lived life, furniture put out there
for strangers to claim and keep.
There is a chair, a side table,
a well mottled mirror, missing
only a bed to complete the tableau,
it all reminds me of the old Pathé
newsreels of war bombed streets
where half a house still stands,
almost vulgar, exposed to air
and eye. The ripped floral wallpaper,
the cold grate, all there to be viewed
by any passer by, perhaps a door
that leads to who knows where,
rooms never seen by any stranger
before, naked now. On another street
I come upon a small table, some toys
and two children’s seats
and wonder where those same children
are now, no doubt somewhere walking in the world
masquerading as adults as we do.
Our secrets hidden behind four walls
and a front door that you need permission
to enter or retreat. Not old castoff lives like this
sprawled out on pavements. Perhaps
some passing child will entreat her parents
to lift the chairs home and grant them succour.
© Jean O’Brien
Jean O‘Brien is an award winning poet with six collections, the latest being Stars Burn Regardless published in 2022 by Salmon Publishing. She was poet in residence in the Centre Culturel Irelandais in Paris in 2021. She has won, been places and highly commended in many competitions. Coming first in the Arvon International competition (UK.), the Fish International and amongst others has been Highly commended in the Forward Single poem prize (UK.), placed and Highly commended in the Bridport Prize (UK). She was awarded a Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh fellowship and various arts counclil awards. Her work has been broadcast and appeared in many anthologies and in Poems on the Dart (Ireland‘s Rapid Rail System). This spring she read and appeared on conversation panels in Carlow University, Pittsburgh (USA), where she tutors in Ireland on their MFA low residency programe. She collaborated with the Texan State Artist Dixie Friend Gay and with Irish Artist Ray Murphy. Her poetry has been set to music and voice by celebrated composer Elaine Agnew and at the inagural launch in Trinity College, Dublin from where she holds an M. Phil in cw/poetry. She currently tutors in Prisons, The Irish Writers Centre and Community Groups.