Anthony Wade, London-born, raised by a deserted migrant Irish mother; knew poverty and prejudice. Thankfully, education available and firmly grasped brought university and a profession. Worked long in The Netherlands before a medical disability eventually brought him Home to his Mother’s county close to where he had spent childhood summers. Joined the local writers’ group in 2016, published his first poem in 2018. Now a Forward Prize nominee with poetry published in Ireland, across Britain, India, Spain, the USA, and Canada.

Imagination

(near Roches Point Lighthouse, East Cork)

Does also the small child looking up
at the fine branches fringing the winter ash
see in their helpless thrashing before
a chilled wind blustering off the sound

the despairing, wavering arms
of the successions of sailors
drowned in the tumultuous waters
shuddering the towered headland

that flashed a failing line of light
that could not be clutched,
only coldly signal the way
to black wet graves unmarked?

Does also the child looking up
see brittle bones beckoning
across the ancient wintry sky,
a corona of lost souls without hope?

Or must the small child first grow
to know a world of pain and loss,
of dreams despoiled and hope expired,
of best plans derailed by indifferent chance?

Thanks For The Memories

They wait confidently in the wings
for the nocturnes and arias of other lands
streaming on the internet from Home to pause,
and then the long-loved songs of love and loss,
of starvation times, the pain of migration,
of desperate but hopeful departures
with forever hope of return,
enter and fill their hearts,
songs with the gift to nourish and nurture
a romantic nostalgia in Irish hearts wherever,
beloved of long generations of ancient ancestors
who never again stepped foot upon the sacred sod,
and descendants who still own the Dream of Home
and might now make pilgrimage to the ‘Home Place’,
forgetting the hopelessness that long drove us away,
these songs that infused my exile years,
the child of Irish parents forced to the ferries
desperate for good work, and yearning to build
a decent family future thought denied them here,
and, come Home at last, I hear these same songs playing
as despairing young Irish workers flee through the airports,
the great-grandchildren of my parents’ generation,
driven away by hopelessness,
their children in their turn
to be born across seas and lands,
and to be raised and flourish there,
yet still always with the old songs of hope
warm in their perhaps forever relocated hearts.

Even In My Autumn Garden

Summer’s slowly releasing tribute is swirling
in the flaxen light of Autumn,

brittle earth-gifts touched with bright cherry,
with cinnamon, and saffron,

whirling and dancing to a fickle breeze’s whimsy,
the strayed child of distant forces,

its freedom constrained by old brick walls,
seemingly aimlessly eddying, pausing and gusting,

yet palettes of restless, rustling drifts of colour
are collecting between ceramic pots of shining hues,

around dull boles of bush and tree,
against walls snug in gentle velvet lichen bodices

of yellow and brown, countless leaves being cached
to become deep, dry winter sanctuaries

where creeping, crawling, composting creatures
can continue endlessly to carry all of us

on their boundless lowly backs,
life’s shy, withdrawing lynchpin.