October 2019

(written on the occasion of new abortion laws being introduced in Northern Ireland)

Mid-autumn clear, the October morning

colours cold with summer tones, the trees are

crimson veterans who have watched this all

before –

beauty’s burn, the rage of something final,

the headlong rush into the shortened days,

our steady forgetting of winters past.

Today, the path into the schoolyard was

strewn with forgotten craft, discarded art

dropped from a child’s bag or a mother’s hand,

a skiff of sparkle star confetti, and

red Christmas evergreens, materials for

a scene that had never been, and now,

with the storm’s strength, will never be again.