Ursula O’Sullivan-Dale (she/her) is a queer English-Irish writer and co-editor of Aimsir, a multilingual literary journal focused on human connections with nature and seasonal modes of living and expression, which promotes preservation of and engagement with the Insular Celtic Languages (Gaeilge/Irish, Gàidhlig/Scots Gaelic, Welsh, Cornish, Breton and Manx).
Her work has been published in Crow & Cross Keys and Skylight 47.
Light the dark
written for The Wife’s Lament, c. 10th century AD
I will secret meanings to you, drop by drop
brief affections spilling over to be killed and grieved in light.
Only to find myself back, and speaking with that wife
of some simple dream shared between two hearts.
Of that thing that keeps slipping from the hand
time and time and time again.
I’ll have the body bound, for you.
I’ll make it fast at the shore, kept from wild tides
that might un-moor it and leave it sinking,
without a thought for the lost souls.
Yes, it’s better to be spared, I think,
the brink, and the endless beyond of it.
Though some little thing at the soul of me will ache, and
some odd beat of my heart
will find itself out of sync
for never knowing how morning’s shadow falls upon your face
or the feel of your body as it turns in the night,
for never knowing what it is to lie down
in some corner of your mind and never leave.
Instead, this body will pass through life’s countless shades of blue,
never quite finding your subtle hue.
Resigning to that brutal closure of the mouth
around those impossible sounds, half-formed.
Yes, it’s better to wait. To wait, until the body
is reduced to its smallest parts and none of its meanings are left hidden.
Its will expressed, at least, through subtle movements
in the dust and graveyard dirt.
Maybe then I’ll call out to you in that safety,
the flat silence of it that keeps my words so well.
And sleep undisturbed, wrapped in the comfort of a dream
knowing my words will be held forever, in this cell below the ground.
I’d rather that, anyway,
than light the dark of my thoughts of you
Snow sleep
Your hair is the nest-and-feather brown
of wings, returned from somewhere warmer.
The shade of your cheek settles in my eye
and comes alive in the broken shards of godlight
that scatter across my country. From a distance,
I observe, waiting for those beams to fall on me
as I settle into this snow sleep. Resting,
as ice whiteness stretches like a skin across the universe.
Halos form around everything
and my vision dims.
I imagine your light, moving in slow beats
and drifting like summer down my back,
reaching the depths of me
through the gaps between my bones.
In my dream, your touch is sunlight
melting into me. In its warmth
my breathing slows, my body knows
winter is here. Godlight is lost
to the great cold and beyond its reach
is a soul, yet to be found
somewhere beneath the unearthly silence
of falling snow.
Morning bones
The warm light of morning
lives in her bones and seeps
into the world around her
as she sleeps.
That gold,
that blows through us
and floats
to the glowing edge of day.
Breathe it in
before she wakes
because, because
at night, it will fall again
as rain.
You lose consciousness,
dreaming in rhythm
with the sound
of her sighs dripping
as the dark fills
with that perfect water,
the starry light
of her tears.
The Galway Review 