HELAYNE SHORT

Two poems

The Piper

The uilleann pipes flood Café Glas
making late lunchers pause over their baked salmon
as the piper steps away
into the west
along streams and rivers that
flow into the hungry loch
travelling the old high roads
across barren hills – (always, towards the west)
to the smell of summer
on the bog,
where a storm sits heavy over the dun
that waits for memory to return,
where no lark sings
but listens
for footsteps on the path

Arboreal dreams

Here the colours ancient familiar,
smell of land and sea,
the life scent of trees –
Jackdaws fly in their hundreds – calling,
Yew trees guard secret ways
and wraiths stand by the bridges rebuilt,
where Seamus – the artful man – shows me sacred places
that whisper – awakens memory in bones.
And so the spiral turns,
in Inishowen.

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Helayne Short is an emerging writer of short stories, poetry and plays. Her work has been published in Famous Reporter and Blue Giraffe. In 2016 her first play ‘Dawn’s Age’ was shortlisted for the Rodney Seaborn Playwrights Award. Ms Short has a background in photo-journalism and print media.