Ode to the Milkman

Unseen, your footfalls float like early dew,
A tipping fulcrum, captain dawn to shore,
The keeper of one hundred blinking moons,
Deposited like lanterns at each door.

You're silent as a backdrop to a dream,
As wheel spokes glint, unroll Hemera's cloak,
Your eyes alone behold her naked gleam,
Your hand unlocks the caged-in glassy notes.

With hearth-sparks, beating palm, you lace the cold.
The cornerstone of morning, time endured,
A memory, a silence not untold,
For countless sleeping ears are reassured.

At sunrise picture bottles smashed in flight,
As day spills round your feet; a pool of light.

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Sinead O'Reilly is a 15-year-old writer from Wexford. She has been twice commended in the Foyle Young Poet of the Year Award and twice runner-up in the Trócaire Poetry Ireland Award. In 2020, she was chosen for the Edna O'Brien Young Writers's Bursary and the Laureate na nÓg mentoring scheme