Easter starlings
On Good Friday we spotted the trail of straw
on the pitch of the roof below the chimney.
A pair of common starlings
were building a nest in our smoke stack.
On Saturday, after due deliberation
we lit the holy fire beneath them.
Oily-feathered blow-ins from Anglia
let them go and nest elsewhere -
in Inis Meain or Falcarragh.
A wind got up and blew from the north west.
The coals glowed and a ring of smoke
curled from the chimney.
All that day as the wind came and went,
the fire burnt holes in our peace of mind.
By evening the rock had been rolled
away from Christ's tomb.
It's all right, I told my wife,
they've gone
Easter Sunday morning, a fine and soft one
with dew on the grass
and black-faced lambs in the field,
the sermon from the priest at Kilshanny church
was all of sanctifying grace, of new life,
of eggs.
On our return from mass, I noticed
a fresh trail of grasses, across the garden,
up the roof to the chimney stack.
There they were
standing shoulder to shoulder
gripping the roof ridge in a brisk gale.
Page(s) 24-25
magazine list
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- 10th Muse
- 14
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- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
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- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
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- Fabric
- Fire
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- French Literary Review, The
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- Interpreter's House, The
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- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
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- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
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- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
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- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
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- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
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- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
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- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The