Live Encounters Poetry & Writing Volume Two Nov-Dec 2026.
Laburnum, poems by Mary O’Donnell.
Laburnum
By September it scarcely draws a glance
When crisped yellow twists wilt to ground.
Winter hacks the pewter bole,
Whips the slim branches in every gale.
No parading in style with the rest
in spring—the birch’s March frieze,
the silent oak, bullet-hard for April release.
Only in May, this cadmium eruption
as golden chains tumble loose, this grace
of florets, when a pour of yellow bathes eyes,
fills my ears with vibrations of bees.
The peak, before true summer has arrived,
high days of love released,
as this tree dandles goldenly, careless
and bright after harsh endurance.
Now. That easy swagger.
Hermes on the Evening Train to Maynooth
He places his bike in the gangway,
sits, frowns, opens his phone,
then scrolls. Hermes out for the day
sits opposite a woman alone, heavy holdall
and tired feet, whose fingers fidget
with rings, an out of date phone.
He wafts scents of Olympus
which she slowly inhales,
a masculine, piping, lack of fuss,
the wings at his ankles, so feather-taut,
now forced to rest. She turns away but notes
through the window a hawk
above the train-tracks, how it glides, floats,
and the foraging goat astray
near the winter-moored canal boats,
steals a glance at the boy’s face, grave
as he studies his phone; lightly
he scrolls, his thumb shaving
the screen. He has not seen her bright
tired face. Nor will he ever. Hermes, blind
to awkward fleshliness, stands lightly,
knee-sprung and alert before the train grinds
to a halt. He gathers his bike,
he is white vapour, the spokes are gleaming pine,
as he whirls past and down the aisle,
blinks, already the wings at his ankles
flimmer wide, he is now without guile,
slips around rushing students, life-abandoned
old evening men and women,
as they shade off into the canal twilight—
North Inner City Evening
Voices drift on the trudge from Amiens Street to Talbot.
tongues of Igbo,
Yoruba, Arabic—present and correct in a city that hums
to an off-beat,
transects time, tines my ears so that I hear. Bearded men
move within crumpled shops
on the stretch towards the Spire, here’s what’s various,
the breads of life—
knubz, ekmek, khlib, offered from each hatch window.
And somewhere rashers and eggs,
limp pizza slices, further along shish kebab, shawarma, and pitta
stuffed with lamb—
wafer-thin breads, Holy Communions of the East, a yeasty hold
on the roof of my mouth.
I wrangle it free with my tongue, lean towards the stories of people
who have come,
shouldering the unbuilt tower of the home they desire,
tongues shape-shifting.
One clean English sentence could do it, delivered to raise them
to the gate of god,
where a case is heard, and PPS numbers, citizen rights, free medicines,
fall softly, like MacNeice’s ladder of angels,
so they can pass, freed, through the valley of darkness.
I head for work
with students who would be writers, observe their struggle
with their own known words.
How not to offend, dismiss, erase. Sometimes I am risen like a bread,
shift shape as I hear the lexis
understood and not. All words, phonemes, prefixes, suffixes,
find my belly, tuck to my gut reflex
on this damp stretch of late evening, make me almost cry out in joy!
Darkness now.
The winding-down season, November: daytime’s glad rags
stripped away,
this officed city shimmers merrily in strips of light and cobalt
as I travel past
the mussel-shell canopy of the bus station, opaline and pink.
Further along, Amiens Street
is mushroom grey, fleckered with lantern yellows.
Finally, a path of cobble
breaks the curve of tram tracks. I pause beside two of our own,
settled on cardboard,
sleeping-bags. Easy, chatty, they advise I watch myself.
How could I not?
Lifetime’s habits worn to thread, thin as I march forth
my daily, cordial performance
(so often repeated that I blush). At the train station
I ascend the escalator,
relinquish voices, niche grammars beyond semantics.
Those warm me
more than what I’ve known. One quick step from grim
platform
to suburban train, certain my known syllables
are moulting
like feathers no longer needed and something new-born
and naked occurs
after I’ve grazed and gazed these streets, found babblement,
head half-crazed
as the train sways, aways, towards the suburbs, and I hurtle,
always hurtle out–—
© Mary O’Donnell
Mary O’Donnell is a prolific and well-known novelist, short story writer, and poet. Her latest novel ‘Sweep the Cobwebs off the Sky’ is published by Époque Press UK, and her tenth poetry collection ‘Tenderness’ appears with Wake Forest University Press in September. She is a member since 2001 of the artists’ affiliation Aosdána. www.maryodonnell.com