Amanda Niamh Dawson was born in London to Irish parents, and then raised in Boston where she attended Tufts University. She worked for years in New York in art and publishing. Amanda now lives in Northern California with her family. Her work has appeared in publications including Pomona Valley Review, The Seventh Quarry, Literary Yard, The Ekphrastic Review, and The Piker Press.
Ode to the Valley Oak
You are god
And goddess
Formed
Ever effacing judgment
Of single eyes
No angle
Is the sum of your parts
No center holds you
Brave chins lift
To meet your gaze
Wind showers light
In strands
And petals dark
Mist clings
To your shadows
Birthing worlds
You twist and spin
To a tune all your own
In time
So much longer
Than us
Mining
Quarry my heart
To mine my mind
Ireland
You left me
Blind by design
So that I would break ground
In my own lost and found
And cross that shadow line
With words
That are mine
County Meath
My mind’s eye keen
I drink in the green
Of fields and forest
These places seen
Pathways known
Deep in my bones
To lonesome towers
I go and stand
My heart grows fast
In oak lands vast
Long turned to stone
Still glints in sand
Tenderness haunts my soul
Alone
In this dark and emerald land
The Galway Review 