A Poem by Róisín Tierney

Safest

Right now

an ouzel dips a wing to list
sideways through the gap in a gale,

a gust blown up out of nothingness;

a heron dreeps its feathers to hunch
under a hail-scur by the bosque;

a kestrel clenches its pinions, drops
onto a panic of fur and bone;

a pinto mare frisks, her gambado
mirrored by the buck foal at her feet;

field-rats scuffle in the hedgerow
and in the ocean, fucus-dark,

multitudes of mussels thread their byssus
onto the sea-bed, onto rocks,

hold themselves (their little selves!) steadfast
against squall, rip-tide and tempest

or just the general ebb and flow,
while we lie here in the cool of our room,

quiet now.

Róisín Tierney was born in Dublin, has lived in Spain and is now settled in London. Her pamphlet Dream Endings (Rack Press 2011) won the 2012 Michael Marks Award. A second pamphlet Five Poems (Clutag Press 2016) followed, and a third, Mock-Orange (Rack Press 2019). Of the latter Seán Hewitt in the Irish Times said “These unsettling, dark lyrics have a wonderful verbal energy; a mythic imagination.” Tierney’s first collection, The Spanish-Italian Border, was published by Arc in 2014 and her second, Tiger Moth, comes out with Turas Press in April 2022. www.roisintierney.blogspot.com