Kathleen Sullivan is an intensive care registered nurse who writes to inspire and heal. Mother of two, grandmother of three. She has had poetry, prose, articles, and short stories published online and in print format in professional journals, church magazines, and anthologies in the UK and USA. Born and raised in West Central Scotland, she now lives on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, in the seaside town of Indian Rocks Beach, Florida. There is always laughter in her home courtesy of the many apps available for video calls with her family, who are dotted around the world.

Long Ago Tomorrows

To Inishmore I made my way
To be with those of yesterday
To smell the sea and touch the stones
And feel their presence in my bones

The sea they fished the land they tilled
Where love and tears and joy were spilled
Inside a croft, in ruin now
Content to be of this somehow

Shadows chilled across my heart
A mother by the fireside sat
To spin and dream if she would dare
Of happy heart without a care

Her infant’s cradle she would rock
And softly to her toddler talk
Not knowing on a summer’s eve
Her infant when a man would leave

The precious ones so far away
Have promised to come back one day
And as I walk these hills alone
My mother whispers child you’re home

Longing

When twilight falls
And evensong begun
The longing in me
Calls my soul to run
Into the deep and dark of velvet dream
Where day is plunged ’till touched by sunlight’s beam

When silence catches my unfinished thought
It encircles me with all that I have not
It illuminates what I must strive to keep
And ignites desires within me when I sleep
For in the shadows comfort will align
Until I hold again that which is mine

Mid Winter

The lady named mid winter
Came to my door last night
Nobody can recall her
But in the morning light
Her gifts are laid before me
suspended in the air
There’s diamonds in my garden
And polished silverware

No wind she sent to chill me
But softly as I rise
Pale golden rays instill me
From bronzed and heavy skies
Beneath her crisp affection
A sleepy earth awakes
And pauses in reflection
Of beauty man forsakes.