Ann Egan, a multi-award winning poet, has held many residencies in counties, hospitals, schools, secure residencies and prisons. Her books are:  Landing the Sea (Bradshaw Books);  The Wren Women (Black Mountain Press);  Brigit of Kildare (Kildare Library and Arts Services and her latest is 2012’s Telling Time (Bradshaw Books).  She has edited more than twenty books including, ‘The Midlands Arts and Culture Review,’ 2010. She lives in County Kildare.
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Good Hair

‘‘She has good hair,
it’s lovely when washed,
and her skin glows,

that’s no mean thing.
Her dark blue eyes are
her father’s delight.

She was always taught
to be neat and tidy,
clean in her habits –

I wouldn’t allow
anything else.
Her boyfriend moons

about her, his queen,
morning and night.
Now she has all this,

but I’ve warned her
it’ll be saucepans,
yards of them for her

to swill, scrub and shine
in the local café, unless
she sorts herself out.

Good hair and all.’’
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Stone Bird

A stone settles to a verge,
smoothness parts the grass,

gathers airy wings inwards,
fatigued now in lost flight.

Twin circlets of white emblazon
its fleeing from a mountain.

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Forget-Me-Not

In secret places,
in hidden forests,
I catch sight of blue flashes,
like those of some unseen bird.

Not the bird of canalways,
but the bird of soil,
of hope and mist,
of songs of generations.

The blue sky all held
in its five petals,
gold of sunlight
spilling out again.

Collection of eternity’s
wonder in petal and twist,
you, small flower of hiding,
fledgling of the past,

messenger of the present,
your stillness tells me
the secret of life beyond
here is still a life to live,

like your gold, your blueness,
my sorrow and my joy.
Words of hope flicker
between you and me.

Forget-me-not.