Poetry Essay - Geranium Pots and Keys and One Poem by Margaret Kiernan

 

Voice for the Wolf

-First person POV

 

Desolation, measured odds

wind cries through ravines

spring floods gain impetus, echo

to the city markets

Eco banter

with Hedge funds.

 

Hunted fleeces long-ago

when men got mine put down

 our odds of survival

were estimated

 now rising heat and melted floes

leave out consent.

They are afraid to wear my coat.

 

Going higher above the canopy

to my abode

I contemplate

centuries of extinction

it runs back to now.

Survive to fail is not my call

fur traders have gone home

 to their Gods

yet the axe persists.

It is a pen.

 

Whooshing eagles fly up mountains

wavering in flight

like weary commuters going home

their feathered wings carry

above the wrung-out

sedition of governments

 uncoordinated’

with natures choirs.

Essay Poetry

Geranium Pots and Keys

by Margaret Kiernan

 

Those days long gone of un-locked front doors and keys left beneath the Geranium pots are now almost forgot. People would say they never happened. Not in their country anyhow. They hadn’t a front door.

As children we did call unannounced to say howdy to our unrelated Grandmothers at their houses. We brought them news. Asked questions. Were noisy too.

Those days before families took their aged and placed them with strangers. Taken out and placed in residential uncaring homes. No outsiders allowed in to mingle without a hullabaloo of paperwork to say who you are, checks and balances or police permit requirements. Are they locked in or are we locked out? Can we get her out, that lady that sits forlorn beside the window and looks at walkers move along the river path? Have her closer?

Remember the age of Myths and Druids. Living out silence into grey stone walls. When people knew God from within. The memory of knowing and its peace. Then bushes thrived, wedged into rocky soil. Beauty may have started with nature, or not. Humankind being part of it, chipped into the balance, arrived at Power, while ethics was gone on a sabbatical to somewhere. Perhaps loaned out. Tensions on shifting grounds.

That piece of land with road frontage became the demand. Raged about in brown envelopes and in the road-train to Bally-go-lightly. Sheltered in the Corporate Tents.

Where had beauty gone, why did it leave, now it was all curlicues, that bitter turned down mouth without a smile. Politicians and small-bit players  standing hours in the  rain, queue to meet the dead, at least say hello to the next of kin.

In 2019’ the plague arrived to assist the career politicians, for then they could leave condolences on- line, keep the two-metre distance, no handshakes. Before the vaccination card show-down. Before the leak of mica from cement. Keep that distance, things are tumbling down.

History comes in layers, colour coded to separate. Remembering remains a faulty thing. What gets left out, or what’s put in?

Days of climate retribution have arrived. Collaboration and mutual assistance are the currency of survival. Butter mountains will drop away, there will be those that say they never were such mountains. Butter found in ancient bogs is well documented.

Housing estates on water-planes ought not be allowed those directives are now saying. Stamped in official legalese and twenty- seven E U  stars. The bogs are to be preserved. Water must find its own level.

The sun will allow us warm through. Storytellers will speak their truths. Glimpse the dawn and rest our elbows upon a gate, gaze at pastures full of flowers. Take time to live, reflect on who we are. The resistance has passed. Now the mood is let us get to the task. The beat of the Heart never more pro-found.

 

Margaret Kiernan is an Irish author and a Best of The Net Nominee for Creative Non-Fiction Award, 2021 and, 2022. She writes fiction, creative non-fiction, essay, memoir, and poetry. She has had poetry and prose published in hard back, in e-book and, on-line, also, in literary journals and magazines. She has multiple short stories and poems in anthology collections and cultural publications.

The Arts Council of Ireland awarded her a Professional Development Bursary, with Westmeath County Council Arts Office, 2021.

The following lists the places she is published in:

 

Live Encounters Magazine, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, The Ekphrastic Review.

The Galway Review, Wildfire Words/Frosted Fire, The Irish Literary Times,

Tim Saunders Publishing, Black-lion Press/Cathal Bùi/Belcoo Poet,

The Blue Nib Literary Journal, Writing In a Woman’s Voice Journal.

Wilderness House Literary Review and Press.

Pendemic.ie Journal-covid nineteen collection,- archived at University College Dublin.

Poet-Head.Wordpress.com.( Collection in Women Poet’s in Ireland, Live archive at The National Library of Ireland Dublin 2 and at University College Dublin, Bellfield, Dublin )  

The Write Life Literary Magazine, Arc Magazine. India, Outlookindia.com,

Red Fern Review. Civic Leicester poetry, Corncrake Literary Magazine.

The Burrow Literary Journal & publishing press, Brave  New World,

Visual Verse, Bath Flash Fiction, Dragonfly Haiku Poetry Journal.

The Daily Haiku, Sand Journal Magazine, Vox Galvia, Galway Advertiser broadsheet.

A New Ulster, Literary Press.

 

Margaret writes with Over the Edge on Thursdays advanced poetry workshop/reading group at Galway Arts Centre. Facilitated by Mr Kevin Higgins, Poet.

She is a member of Ox Mountain Poets, Sligo.

She is listed in the Index of Contemporary Women Poets in Ireland, 2020.

She holds a Degree in Arts in Humanities in Advocacy from Sligo Institute of Technology.

An International Degree in Business Management, from Sheffield University and Technological University of the Shannon.

Her background is in Advocacy in Human and Social Rights. She is a Democracy activist.

Margaret has completed courses and workshops in writing, for prose and poetry. Tutors in poetry include,

Annemarie Ni Churainn, Martin Dyer, Colm Keegan, Monica Corish, Moyra Donaldson, Anne McMaster, Noel Monahan (Master Series), Kevin Higgins, Dr Arthur Broomfield.

Tutors in prose includes, Jan Carson, Claire Allan, Anne McMaster, Conor Kostick, Carlo Gebler, Malacai O’Doherty, Lynda Kirby, Ciara Doorley and, Susan Millar Dumars.

Margaret has four grown-up children. She lives in Westmeath with her dog Molly.

She paints in Watercolours and acrylics and has the following interests. Nature, philosophy, astrology, gardening, music, spirituality, archaeology, and historical heritage.