Download PDF Here 13th Anniversary
Live Encounters Poetry & Writing Volume Two December 2022.
I Believe, poems by Margaret Kiernan.
I Believe
After, Wislawa Szymborska
Time is fluid
celestial spheres shape shift.
Mesopotamian myths
inscribed on stones
found in caves with bones
clay tablets with parables exist.
I believe in archetypes
cycles of the sun
sacred appeasements
crop circles in barley fields
pigeons’ home to roost.
I believe in democracy
from radical Athenian Pericles
from the lost art of being my brother’s keeper
to Zaporizhzhia holding out to Putin’s war
the leak gapped, resists implosion
holds Europe in its thrall.
Excess toil is careless, I believe
time is better spent gazing
at the moon.
I believe twenty-three thousand years, B.C.
sin and evil myths arrived at our earth
then shattering fiery comets
fell to the ground.
I believe, Christianity became an Empire
in three hundred Anno Domini.
A Roman State proclaimed
decrees about unholy things
I believe
my Self is holy
of itself.
Love.
Conversation with the Body
after Anna Swir.
I wouldn’t swat a fly
or waste a spider in my bath.
My hands are those of my tribe
I eye the inheritance
to scoop that spider
in cottonwool
place it on the windowsill
outside
my instinct to survive
a memory from sometime
save the scorpion
but do not touch.
Those fingers do all the work
sometimes unbidden from
commands or a reflex
following on from thought
a sly pain now heralds rain
signs of age.
Or when I hold beads of pearl or glass
or ropey plastic ones to excise sin.
Or write on any vacant space
painted canvas colour base.
Or hold my food
save snooting rude
a famine upheld
by having fingers
that once flowed pus
from a nailbed
punctured by thorns
while harvested ripe blackberries
wilt in a pail.
Two bites One time
after Boris Slutsky
It isn’t done that cut flowers cry
or talk to you
given time
they shrivel
and die.
It isn’t done to suck the bones
at table or above the ground
It isn’t done to bite the apple
then place it back in the bowl
or cry to the plants
in perennial beds
It isn’t done to laugh at your neighbour
their politics or wealth
that failed economic plan
in fear it might follow you home
or your lot might copy it down.
People are alike
watch for miracles
afraid they’ll land on a Kerch Bridge
arrive somehow on a postage stamp.
Karma is about
don’t doubt
somewhere.
*Kerch Bridge linked Russia to occupied Crimea. It was blown-up days ago, October 2022.
The Ukraine postal service are to create a postage stamp to commemorate the event.
© Margaret Kiernan
Margaret Kiernan has a background in Public Policy and Social Justice. She writes poetry and short stories. She also paints landscapes in mixed media. She is published in, The Blue Nib Literary Journal, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Burrow at Old-water-rat publishing Australia, The Galway Review, Poet Head, A New Ulster, Anthologies, and Cultural news magazines. She is listed in The Index of Contemporary Women Poets in Ireland, 2020. She writes with the Thursday Group of poets, at Over -the-Edge, Galway. Is also a member of Ox Mountain poets.