Lorely Forrester was born in Kenya, raised in the West Indies, moved to England mid-teens and graduated from King’s College London, afterwards working at IPC Magazines, then in advertising and film documentaries. She now lives in Ireland, where she was Editor/Feature writer of Discover Sligo magazine for years, wrote PR & marketing material, organised events, designed gardens including a Gold Medal-winning show garden at Bloom and introduced (commercially) a new rose named WB Yeats. She also started Secret Gardens of Sligo charity garden trail. She has been writing and gardening since childhood. She is now an Irish Citizen.
February
Today I longed to tell you that amidst
the wind and rain and steely grey,
a snowdrop opened in the flowerbed.
The first to come, white as crisp paper
in the dull, dead winter soil, clean as a
new pin. I pictured you, lifting her tiny,
delicate head, so demurely bowed,
loving her frilly petticoats, laughing at
layers so ruched and ruffled, trimmed
in your favourite green; smoothing her
milk-sheened skirts, seeking her golden
throat, hidden inside, unseen. I used
to call and share the joy of this first
queen of spring, my first Fair Maid of
February, to ply your lonely afternoon
with this small dainty gift: a Candlemas
lily to feast your mind’s eye. I’d call today,
If only I could reach where you now lie.
Port Avade
The snap of wine, cold across my tongue,
crisp as a breeze lifting after dusk, curls me
to memory, unravelling like a dream.
We are sitting, you and I, in half-fledged dark,
stray stars spitting above horizons green against the sea.
The stones still warm beneath us, sand trickling
through toes, held in our separate stillness
from their easy flow. Our yesterdays have swirled
into the hills behind Lisheen, unborn tomorrow
spills onto the shore in waves as gentle as the
break of day, not touching us, cresting unseen.
The rest? Their laughter catches in the night,
eddies around us; and their half-seen faces,
flickered in firelight, drift in and out like smoke.
A tang of mackerel teases through the air, salt-fresh
and hissing on the spit as bone-white driftwood
crackles into flame. Inside the circle we are set
apart, cocooned within our silence, half disguised,
while wine curls on our tongues, cold as the
secret ocean stretched before our eyes.
Muted
Over the bones
of my poems
I finally fall asleep,
only to wake, limbs
akimbo, as if in flight,
as if chasing words
across limitless horizons
where still they
elude and taunt me,
while fluent stars
preen raucously
outside my window.
Fifteen
I leave him at the bus station
one easy afternoon of summer,
rain steaming off the street. Lazy
smile and the willow-bend of his
back in the rigid seat. Time,
that is my master, has not yet
broken him, just cheats him unaware,
making the hour-long wait merely
another segment of his day, ripe as
sweet strawberries, succulent in the
late June heat. Unencumbered, he
doesn’t know or care. Time and to spare
lies before him like an unchecked
balance sheet, opulent with credit,
only depleted of petty cash – he is a
millionaire with choices illimitable.
Strident, the voices call ‘Charlestown
and Claremorris, Cloonfad and to
Galway.’ He rises to his feet, but
he is otherwhere, with no timetable,
just a journey to complete.
The Mill at Chaldecoste
It is a world made blue: of mountains merging into mountains,
mile-on-mile, melding into haze. Sky that is just a taut silk-
screen, sun-stretched and glazed. Small butterflies, and
iridescent beams so bright they dapple up from streams to ripple
onto smooth pale trees. Wild scabious, and the cyan gleam of
dragonflies in flight – translucent chiffon, hypnotized by light.
Deep shadows that paint indigo on leaves, and frieze the sides
of pooled-wet rocks that never dry. The bloom on soft ripe figs,
the sheen on blackberries; the cobalt rush of ecstasy as
swift jays fly. And always overhead that tight stretched sky.
‘Til evening light, when lazy wisps of smoke blur blue against
the pine, melt into velvet night where burning sapphires shine.
The Galway Review 