Anne Casey - Suggestions for living (Ireland/Australia)

from #BreakTheBias by Various

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about

Anne Casey is an Irish poet/writer living in Australia and author of four poetry collections. A journalist, magazine editor, legal author and media communications director for 30 years, her work ranks in The Irish Times’ Most Read and is widely published and anthologised internationally. Anne has won literary prizes in Ireland, the UK, the USA, Canada, Hong Kong and Australia, most recently American Writers Review 2021 and the 2021 iWoman Global Award for Literature. A law graduate from UCD, she is the recipient of an Australian Government Scholarship for her PhD examining The Second-Wave Impact in Australia of the Great Irish Famine at the University of Technology Sydney.

Website: www.anne-casey.com
Twitter: twitter.com/1annecasey

lyrics

SUGGESTIONS FOR LIVING, a cento
After Jessie Lendennie

Lay still, the sounds heard
the beginnings of comfort; feel
the sea on the wind, the fall-falling
of the wave riding the horizon

and the waves recede beyond the cliffs,
beyond the trees; rows upon rows,
filling their long trailing sacks; in the darkness,
the silence at the centre of the wind, the sound of rain.

In the dark, trace a circle around the willow
time the slowest of movements; fine rain
against thin glass, against hard stones
like so many broken children; grow

into Gypsy, Hobo, a child of rain;
know water as it seeps from sky,
from the heart; know the sharp light of sun
on bottles broken in the street.

The horizon is both this path and
the edge of the sea; and memory
is a fracturing, a breaking of light and dark
with an old dog who knows all the secret places

down the unpaved road to the calm bay;
become part of something sacred
salmon in a small stream that rolled
down to the beach, going home or starting out.

Believe in past lives; sit and wait
for everyone to come home
silver dogs in the sea, unhindered,
gazing down the valley to Liscannor, Lahinch

and the bay; walk the stones of Clahane:
romantic Ireland smells of soft wind;
move slowly among ghosts
whose bodies are anywhere

but here; lose place; follow another pack; maybe
take a wrong turn at the edge of the sea
as the last storm leaves again;
lay still, the night moved

past; brush wonder
as a child, fingers
tapping at windows;
reach out, softly moved.

credits

from #BreakTheBias, released March 8, 2022
CREDITS:
'Suggestions for living' is taken from the collection,'the light we cannot see' (Salmon Poetry 2021)
www.salmonpoetry.com/details.php?ID=542&a=307