Our Poem Of The Week comes from Cork poet Lauren O'Donovan, taken from her new poetry chapbook Superposition.
Dear Small Girl
This morning, I was a robin in the garden, hiding
under the bent blades of a daffodil, and you
were a blueberry in the grass. You screamed
with laughter when I caught you,
pecking off little bites, filling myself up.
In my mind, I rehearse our future conversations,
while you're at school, while you sleep — cocooned
in monster-proof sheets, snoring like a puppy —
while you swing with a foot-push, then a bent-knee pull,
between girlhood and what’s next.
I wish I could slow life down — let us stop
and hold this moment
in the cupped bowl of your determined hands
like that day at Iona Beach
when you held those stunned songbirds,
caught in cloth bags, weighed, and banded,
then placed in your waiting palms until you were ready
to blow on their feathered bellies like birthday candles.
About The Poet: Lauren O'Donovan has won the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award, the Cúirt New Writing Prize, the Southword Subscriber’s Poetry Prize and, most recently, the Fool for Poetry Chapbook Competition. Her debut chapbook Taxidermy Heart, winner of the 2023 Patrick Kavanagh Award, was published in April 2025 by Cork City Libraries, and her second chapbook Superposition, winner of this year's Fool for Poetry Chapbook Competition, will be published by Southword Editions in May 2025. She lives in Cork with her family.
