Live Encounters Poetry & Writing 16th Anniversary Volume Six
November- December 2025
First Frosts, poems by Brid Connolly.
First Frosts
A skim of frost on the neighbour’s roof
is like a dust of icing sugar
on the luscious chocolate cakes
that my mother made for my birthdays,
until I left childhood and started my own life.
As the sun sweeps by the chimneys
a huge image emerges, like Seán Scully’s
Arrest with his signature themes and
tints and hints and pulse and bars
of night shades bisecting yellows and browns.
Meanwhile, down at the harbour,
two swans glide over astral waters,
their cygnets gone from the nest,
as the golden couple drift in the blue
skies of the October day’s first frosts.
Another Maynooth September
Virginia Creeper transforms
from jade, emerald, malachite
to flushing ruby, garnet, amber,
while rough squalls sever pearly stems
from entangled vines on hallowed walls,
to carpet tarry pathways with fallen leaves
rescuing the feet of fresh-faced students,
setting them on the bejewelled corridors,
towards fulfilling faith in future dreams.
Marauders
Bríd Connolly has had poems published in Fire: Brigid and the Sacred Feminine, Storms IV, New Irish Writing, Flare: Readings from Dublin’s Sunflower Sessions and Live Encounters. Some of her poems were short- and long-listed in the Fish Poetry Competition, Anthony Cronin Competition, and Gregory O’Donoghue Competition.