Continua, poems by Enda Coyle

Enda Coyle Greene is the author of three collections of poetry; Snow Negatives ( 2007), Map of the Last ( 2013) and most recently Indigo, Electric, Baby (2020) all published by Dedalus Press, Dublin. She lives in Skerries,and she is a devout believer in Minerva.

Freight on a trailer in a yard in Swords

Wind lifts

the canvas roof

as I pass; rain forecast in another language offloads, soaks me.

Continua

Like a moth, muchmagnified,

its wing-beats broad, flat,

almost audible,

this time the owl in our headlights is tawny,

not white.

We’re passing Ardla where my own dead rest,

when a hare jinks from the ditch,

kicks back panicked dust yet sticks with us

on the hill before vanishing to wherever a hare goes once

it has finished being a continuum of souls.

I’m thinking of a friend,

her all-too-swift affinity with living,

as a shade splits the darkness into darkness that shifts.

I see only eyes, backlit as if star-packed:

it has to be a cat, it has to be black,

it couldn’t possibly be

otherwise, tonight.

© Enda Coyle Greene