1 poem
The Tender Ministry of Time
As split gusts sound their transit,
A prelude to that annual libretto of frost,
A last jewelled aerial syncopation of brightly thrashing yellows and reds and greens,
The forerunner of crunching spines and glistening veins co-mingled as a future feast for spores,
A vast nexus of alveoli, sacs of spent breadth gobbled, as each may be the last –
Their canopic raiments giving lease to tunnels of light –
Here, where the parasite of scavengers, strepsiptera,
Forms a base echo of the last breath of youth,
Dying inside the body to give life to the body,
A seed of faith in the death of history,
Most holy is our love.
And here, led by an instance derived from the changes in an amber-coated form,
The slow beating heart of that singular shape opens unto spring
In pink and white blossoms, yellows and hard-worn greens,
And the first of those pink dappled tongues,
now in brilliant gold, red, and orange,
crisp-edged, but tired and bending,
Returns unto ash.
Irish poet, academic, and journalist, Oisín Breen’s debut, Flowers, all sorts in blossom ... was released Mar., 2020. Breen is published in 75 journals, including in About Place, Door is a Jar, Northern Gravy, North Dakota Quarterly, Books Ireland, the Seattle Star, La Piccioletta Barca, Reservoir Road, and Dreich, which will also publish Breen’s second collection, (4² by 5), later this summer. Breen’s third full collection, the experimental Lilies on the Deathbed of Étaín will be published by Beir Bua Press, January 2023.