Tag Archives: Alba Publishing

Elsewhere

 

Japan

Shinbazu Pond –
even these withered lotuses
can lift my heart

 

heated toilet seat –
memories of growing up
in a large family

 

deep-fried pork:
I await instructions
on how to eat it

 

we look through the dark
to the place where Mount Fuji
is supposed to be

 

arrival in Kyoto…
I buy flowers for myself
flowers for the Buddha

 

the clunk of wooden sandals
on stone paving –
Mount Otowa

 

thatched with water reeds
topped with acer leaves –
Basho-an the poet’s hut

 

further uphill
autumn birdsong leads the way –
Buson’s grave

 

wandering poet’s well               its stone collar lotus

 

dusk over the city           two small girls in flowery kimono

Japan has been extracted from Maeve O’Sullivan’s latest publication Elsewhere
available from Alba Publishing
Dubliner Mave O’Sullivan’s poetry and haiku have been widely published, anthologised and translated.
Her four collections are Elsewhere (2017); Initial Response, An A-Z of haiku moments (2011); Vocal Chords (2014); and Double Rainbow (2005) all available at Alba Publishing
Maeve is a winner of the Listowel Writers’ Week poetry competition for a single poem, and conducts haiku workshops with adults and children.
A lecturer in Media Studies, she lives in Dublin
Maeve’s new collection of poetry, Elsewhere is available from Alba Publishing

Perspective

sphinx

PERSPECTIVE

Beneath this topography she sees:

sandstones shaped by wind and wave,

azurites blue and malachites green;

fossils, remnants of another age,

present her with an insight

to a record no longer extant:

the dinosaur, the trilobite

some footprints, an exotic plant.

These granites primordial –

crystalline intrusions –

now weathered to reveal

our igneous conclusions.

World-weary, she rests on pillow-basalt,

has paleo-dreams in the limestone vault

 

 

Dubliner Maeve O’Sullivan’s work has been widely published and anthologised for twenty years. Her collections  poetry (Vocal Chords, 2014), are from Alba Publishing. www.twitter.com/maeveos – See more at: https://bodhicharya.org/manyroads/poetry-maeve-osullivan/#sthash.l4HX8bE6.dpuf

 

 

Maeve