Live Encounters Poetry & Writing 16th Anniversary Volume Two
November- December 2025
Soldier, poems by Jim Burke.
Soldier
One day he shelved his childhood
and left a glass-jar life with minnows.
UK bound, then soon
to Iceland and Reykjavik
with the RAF, where
his voice acquired
an English cadence.
He accepted a service medal
but carried in the breast
pocket of his tunic, a half crown
that his father gave him
at the bus station.
‘If you ever need to make
it back home,’ is what he said.
Era
Everything is but for the moment
a rick of hay
the joker sitting up front
behind a slow old horse.
Nostrils tingle in the dust
of the hot afternoon air.
Sometimes these left-over echoes
of humour and affection
gather from our ghostly land
to become anecdotes
on a cart-path that evinces
the clacking accent of time.
© Jim Burke
Jim Burke is co-founder with John Liddy, of The Stony Thursday Book. His haiku feature in ‘Between the Leaves: New Haiku Writing from Ireland’, Arlen House (2016). ‘Quartet’ with Mary Scheurer, Peter Wise and Carolyn Zukowski (2019) ‘Montage’ Literary Bohemian Press (2021) ‘Slipstreaming in the West of Ireland’ (with John Liddy), Revival Press (2024). Guest editor with John Liddy of the 2025, 50th Anniversary Edition of The Stony Thursday Book.
Fabulous. So evocative!