An Invitation to the Late Mr Yeats
Return. Regenerate
like Coole's flooded gardens.
This birthday, renew
your initials on the copper beech.
Stay awhile. Listen to swan
wings whack October's lake.
Look for light: svelte,
slivering into the seven woods.
© 2019 Karen J McDonnell
Corridor Assessment
He is in the Assessment Unit.
We are in the corridor.
Later, I fetch coffee.
Plenty of time for small
talk. For memories of the aunt
who insisted on sea
dipping, in her nineties.
Shells and her swimming togs
in the coffin. She sent us
post-decimalisation envelopes
heavy with fifty-pence coins
she sellotaped to birthday cards.
Diagnosis is around the corner.
We might make ninety.
There's laughter in the corridor.
© 2019 Karen J McDonnell
Karen J McDonnell is published most recently in Irish Times New
Irish Writing, spontaneity.org, and special Irish editions of The
North and CoastToCoastToCoast. She has won several awards and
been listed in competitions, including 2018’s Anthony Cronin, and
Bangor poetry competitions and the 2017 Robert Monteith, Poems
for Patience, and Dermot Healy Poetry prizes. She has read at festivals
and spoken word venues around Ireland, and on RTÉ Radio's Sunday
Miscellany and The Poetry Programme. Awarded Tyrone Guthrie and
Birr writers’ residencies, her debut poetry collection is This Little World
(Doire Press). She lives in the Burren, beside the Atlantic.
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