Live Encounters Poetry & Writing, Volume One, December 2020.
Roisín Browne lives in Rush, Co Dublin and has been published in several publications including A New Ulster, The Galway Review, Flare, The Stony Thursday Book, Live Encounters Poetry & Writing, Poetry NI and Echoes from the Castle Anthology. She was shortlisted for her poetry in the Over the Edge New Irish Writer of the Year in 2017 and was awarded third prize in the Jonathan Swift Awards in the same year. She was commended in the Gregory O’Donoghue Awards in 2018 and shortlisted in The Seventh Annual Bangor Poetry Competition in 2019.
Relinquished
after Sharon Olds
I relinquished her to amber evenings and covert stars,
to shucked oysters and tarred currachs
I relinquished her to saffron shadows and emerald canyons,
to pink-blush parasols and sufi dancers
I relinquished her to chess board floors and celloed ceilings,
to botanic aviaries and orchid springs
I relinquished her to a Pacific Ocean and Indian tides,
to fossilled jewels and sweets of pebble
I relinquished her to gaberdine souls, sodden by a Tuesday bus stop,
to laughing babies, their chubby bellies bouncing wide
I relinquished her to amber evenings and covert stars,
to us, to air, to here.
Pray Air
a breath taken on ocean mornings,
exhaled on whitened moors
air dancing on scarlet plains,
coating coral stars
birds swifting on copper fields,
swallowtails glancing mint-veined leaves
foals that leap on new found earth,
limbs that stretch in ancient poses;
dive deep as indigo sands,
flame quick as tangerine coals
skim topaz warrior rivers,
be honey blossom, tumble
grasp nothing, fast and slow
open eagle canyons and gather kin.
Gentle
Let the Invisible,
becalm your tendered heart
console your pummelled sinews
refresh your heavy frame
and inundate your fractured space,
with a sheltering embrace.
© Roison Browne