We present a quartet of poems from Everything Gathers Light, the new collection from Eithne Lannon, published by Turas Press.
In Everything Gathers Light, the poet deepens her immersion in the themes of history, place and the natural world, as well as confronting the personal challenges of dealing with and accepting losses common to all human experience.
Tower Bay, Portrane
Everything gathers light;
sea-spray splicing air, slick
of eelgrass over green-laced rock,
spindrift breezing, and in the distance,
the sun rolls down Lambay's shiver
of strand, rituals of ocean, their rhythms
and spills, the kayak's foam-cuffed
trail now a vein of vanishing
ripples. Wave-pleats fold
and crease, while out
along the horizon, the pause
of settled light, brightness honed
to a scalpel,
and the whole world curves
to meet the cleave
of a sea-gull's wing.
At Mornington
By the dunes’ edge
they lie on briny threads of grass,
the weft and bind
of its sand-loving roots beneath them,
their shared skin under a honeyed sky
and a slight chill wind wrapping
its way round salted limbs,
heat coming off sifting sand,
body-ripples trembling
at the fragile centre of things.
And to the side, light
on the shoreline, its soft gleam
on water, the dropping away
edges where sea-skin stops, touchings
of salt and sand, their elemental yearning,
a steady pulse of giving
and taking, grounded
and in air, hovering
on the sweet edge
of nowhere.
Cormorant
High
on a rock,
in full body-stretch—
a thin charcoal sketch,
her sudden wings
spread
in wind-delight,
plumage black as twists
of tarred hemp.
With the tide's advance, she drops
her arms, feathers jet-gleamed
and coal-bright, glistening
in green-hued, obsidian light,
slid tight by her side
as she dives
through the dark-fleshed
gateway of your mind.
Malahide Demesne
Their dust filters down
through this empty
dwelling.
Moths
come out,
wing-softly
as a breath
and by the door,
a granite stone shines smooth
and light-reflecting
worn by the feet
of those we never knew.
Everything Gathers Light is published by Turas Press
