Live Encounters Poetry & Writing Volume Five November-December 2024
First Day at School, poems by Marie Studer.
First Day at School
I’m four years old clutching the seat
of an ink-well desk,
its wood as hard as the words
stuck in my glottis.
Behind Mary Halpin and Ellen Noonan
shuffle as my slipped-stream
dyes buff-boards black.
Mrs Somers roams between rows,
stops by the shuffling pair.
My tears trickle at the flow
of her kind words, my fist
unfurling in her soft palm.
Lost and Found
I dreamed my mother sitting on a garden chair,
her salt and pepper hair brushing a roll collar
of green suede, as she cooed to a chirping robin in the thicket.
I called out and again, she disappeared.
I remained in the void, recalled her re-telling,
how in a department store, she turned to find me not there,
ran, ran, calling my name, watched in slow-motion as
I was scooped from the tarmac of Dublin’s main thoroughfare,
by a man in blue overalls.
He slipped through the hive of onlookers,
and right to the end, she regretted not getting
his name or hanseling a crown in his palm.
Next day, I dig and the robin feasts on turned tufts of earth.
Grief
Sometimes she drifts between
the quiet house and the back garden
gets down on her knees
and with bare hands
weeds and thins drills of carrots
scattering tap roots and fronds
in trenches of loss
only lifting her head
when earth surges her veins
spilling tears to fill up empty again.
© Marie Studer
Marie Studer, Co. Limerick, Ireland recently published her debut poetry collection, Real Words (Revival Press). She is widely published in journals and anthologies. She is a past category winner of the Trócaire/Poetry Ireland competition and The Bangor Ekphrastic Challenge, and her poems have been placed in many competitions, most recently, The Denis O’Grady, International Poetry Competition.
Very nice Marie!
Always a treat.