With the last lazy leaving of the day’s
collected warmth, the invisible air lies on my face
as lightly as the soft breath of imagined spirits,
with darkening night diffidently slipping in
to lay cold tears among tangled grasses and
entwining weeds.
Standing beyond the bought light that blinds,
I set my back to the honeyed glow doming the City
and open my face to the cold blackness descending
from the stretching sky glistening with its strewn
clusters, and let its silence slowly, surely settle
deep within me.
Then come the rustlings and shiftings, the presence
of concealing creatures that do not sleep in safe beds
but tremble awake at noises we are spared, and
above the stirrings of restless wings within the boughs
breaks the caaw of a solitary crow arriving late to
its high refuge.
The turning tide lifts a breeze flavoured by passing scents,
with sweet woodbine strong to draw distant moths, that
gently starts leaves lightly quavering, with there the
snare drum of a jackdaw disturbed, and among
these companions my heart hears again the lifting music of
an ancient tongue.
Poem by Anthony Wade
Anthony Wade, Irish, the only child of an Irish migrant single mother into England, an England-trained lawyer who worked in The Netherlands, published a first poem in 2018 after returning to Ireland, and since in poetry magazines across the British Isles, India and the US, both in print and online. Now a Forward Prize nominee, he lives by the sea in East Cork, Ireland, and is an active member of the local Writers’ Group. Twitter@anthonywadepoet.