Live Encounters Poetry & Writing 16th Anniversary Volume Six
November- December 2025
The Birdcage by my Bed, poem by Kate Ennals.
The Birdcage by my Bed
For Lesley
It came filled with wild, white plastic flowers
but now I have stuffed my birdcage with pink sunrise,
blue sky, brown, muddy estuaries and vast green oceans.
Strands spill out through its narrow grey bars,
all broken creations. Caged like this, they vie for space
a mass of mohair, alpaca, angora, arran, merino
every thread knotted, twisted, and tangled
no longer the colour coded, matched, pristine
balls of chunky lined up in a wondrous display
full of temptation and desire. Instead, they are looped,
disordered fibres, damaged dreams entwined with bright
coloured nightmares. Ideas gone hideously wrong. Yet
still, each one holds a vestige of hope, of becoming…
something a round, a row, a part of a whole in the world.
© Kate Ennals
Kate Ennals has published poems and short stories in a range of literary and on-line journals (Crannog, Skylight 47, Honest Ulsterman, Live Encounters, Boyne Berries, Stony Thursday, Crossways, The Ogham Stone, Poetry Ireland Review, plus many more). She has published three collections of poetry. At The Edge (Lapwing) was published in 2015. Threads (Lapwing), was published in April 2018. Elsewhere (Vole Imprint), in November 21. Her fourth, Practically A Wake, will be published shortly (Salmon Poetry). Her blog can be found at https://kateennals.com/.