Categories
Poetry

afterswim

By Orla Cowan

let me give you reason to run rhyming down the beach
horizon your eyeline: claggy timeline of sea over sky
gulls like gills flit with waves so rousing
seas right through you, all you know
is now – thrown off towel

succumb sparring lungs with every, each –
sandy second of the upturned
hourglass, momentary
motionless ocean

enclosed in a conch, an echoed Irish ‘ach’
rush of a last wave goodbye
salt-pinched toes meet

shell-shocked sand with a crun ‘ch’ –
hold hand up to face

breathe out, aspired ‘h’ –

Featured Image: Honor Adams

Categories
Poetry

And s(n)o(w) it falls

And s(n)o(w) it falls

Orla Cowan

 

rooftops and windowsills shoulder with

quiet acquiescence the flaky pinpricks 

of icy ashes – and (look!) there is

an equal, fickle coating of the pavement – 

nonetheless with a movement 

decisive, deliberate, perhaps well-meant

Look, there is more than one captured sense

now the morning’s silence is crystallised

in clear, printed lines from eye to mind –

spiralling, soon-to-fade footfalls left behind.