Live Encounters Poetry & Writing 16th Anniversary Volume Three
November- December 2025
Wild Garlic, poems by Nessa O’Mahony.
Wild Garlic
For some it’s a pest,
festooning itself
over flower beds,
lush green stems
squeezing honesty out.
Others delight in it,
harvest it for salads
got from the Guardian.
I once saw a sheep
back itself through
a new wire fence
to chomp some more
of it, air heavy
with pesto-fragrance
for days afterwards.
Unlike the cuckoo,
it means it.
Spring is here,
it chortles.
No turning back
now.
Sanderlings at Keel
From a distance they look
like little balls of froth
skittering on the tide line,
tiny clockworks, pin-
balling here and there
as the waves turn up
worms and crustaceans.
Come nearer, stand
enthralled by sheer joy
at their movement,
tiny legs pausing,
then speeding up
the ramps to
100 per minute.
So small a bird
for so vast
a sand universe.
Their lesson:
don’t stop,
not for a second,
and don’t get
your feet wet.
© Nessa O’Mahony
Nessa O’Mahony was born in Dublin. She has published five books of poetry – Bar Talk, (1999), Trapping a Ghost (2005), In Sight of Home (2009), Her Father’s Daughter (2014) and The Hollow Woman on the Island (2019). A sixth collection, Dodder Daughter, will be published in 2026. She has edited journals and anthologies, including the Poetry Ireland Review Issue 138 tribute to Eavan Boland, and writes fiction and non-fiction. She is an associate lecturer with The Open University and has a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing from the University of Wales, Bangor.