by Noel Duffy

I felt the pebble of what once was
pass between us, beady and hard
and durable, as we always knew it
to be but had forgotten —
until we pulled close and kissed
and wrapped our limbs about each other
found comfort in touch upon our bodies.
He sleeps now beside me like before,
the patter of rain on the sill making me
drowsy with its rhythm. I will sleep awhile
and rest and when we wake we will smile
across the distance that recently seemed
so great between us, remembering
what has happened today and the words
we said –that all things may be forgiven
as we kiss and pull each other closer still,
husband and wife, and lovers again.

by Ciaran O’Driscoll

                                               There was a car
speeding towards you on the same side of the road,
coming head–on against you but you swerved
to the other side, lessening the impact
to a glancing back–door blow, and for a moment
you were the one in the wrong lane but no one
crashed into you that moment and you spun
to a halt on the grassy margin, the car
facing the way you came and there was silence.
And you described the silence as nothing
of any consequence, not a big deal —
matter–of–fact as the fact that you were dead,
that you had lived and this was how your life
had come to an end. And what will happen now?
you wondered calmly, then you realized
that you were still alive and felt no pain,
so you waited for the pain to strike and when
it didn’t, you unbuckled your seat belt,
opened the driver’s door and made your way
back to the world of the living, walking
towards three women, the nearest witnesses,
who asked were you all right and you asked for
your glasses and your handbag, and one woman
went to the car to get them, saw a pack
of cigarettes in the handbag’s side–pocket,
and said you could do with one but you refused,
a decision that puzzles you to this day.

by Pat Boran

Because his life depended on it,
because there was no other path,
because night was coming on
and the hounds were closing fast

he took to the river; up to his chest
in the freezing water he waded out,
fighting to keep upright but then
suddenly swept right off his feet;

so that the thing he’d feared the most
like most of the things we draw back from —
losing our footing, being carried off —
became the thing his life depended on.

by Pat Boran

The morning so cold, the earth
so utterly iced up, a child asks her mother
how the gravediggers will dig out a hole
big enough for her friend. The mother
smiles, all around us
other adults stood in their veils
of breath, the vapor–clouds
of self, reminded of how insubstantial
all of this is, the forest of dates
we have passed through
on our way to this moment
where the priest raises his hands aloft
to intone, watched over
by puzzled, shivering children
and a tangle of buxom angels
in their lingerie of stone.