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Poem of the week: Unhitchings by Ann Leahy

Horse chestnut. Photograph: Getty

Ann Leahy
Sat Jun 26 2021 - 00:00

When someone called a radio show
to talk about Horse Chestnuts, and how
they were 'green and spiky, just like the virus',
I thought, pack it in, everyone's a poet now.

All year the countryside spoke in metaphor.
It started when those dull flowers, Ribwort Plantain
(normally noticed by no-one) were everywhere seen
flaunting their corollas of bright-white anthers.

Then, as summer evenings drew their shutters down,
we noticed that the air was full of dots and specks,
how a wayward Dandelion seed might slant by,
or turn and parachute down on any in-breath.

When great swathes of Ivy bloomed, they seemed
to brandish pale-green pompoms, and, on another whim,
they thrust their seed-heads at us, each old-time
pin-cushion radiating long, round-headed pins.

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Our stay-at-home lives seemed too to have
gone back in time – no one had anything to add
to conversation, except for the washer on spin,
which spoke of one thing: CO-VID, CO-VID, CO-VID.

When I brought home a Burdock burr
that had fastened itself to my trailing scarf
(I know, you saw that one coming)
I had to tease out its spines, hooked sharp

among threads torn loose and ragged.
Those threads will now forever bear those marks
as the year's unhitchings and requisite constrictions
will be there, could we see them, on our hearts.

Ann Leahy. Photograph: Eric Luke

Ann Leahy’s first collection, The Woman Who Lived Her Life Backwards (Arlen House, 2008), won the Patrick Kavanagh Award. She grew up in north Tipperary and lives in Dublin

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