من الأشهر اليوم؟

When someone called a radio show to talk about Horse Chestnuts, and how they were ‘green and spiky, just like the virus’, I thought, pack it in, everyone’s a poet now.
All year the countryside spoke in metaphor. It started when those dull flowers, Ribwort Plantain (normally noticed by no-one) were everywhere seen flaunting their corollas of bright-white anthers.
Then, as summer evenings drew their shutters down, we noticed that the air was full of dots and specks, how a wayward Dandelion seed might slant by, or turn and parachute down on any in-breath.
When great swathes of Ivy bloomed, they seemed to brandish pale-green pompoms, and, on another whim, they thrust their seed-heads at us, each old-time pin-cushion radiating long, round-headed pins.
Our stay-at-home lives seemed too to have gone back in time – no one had anything to add to conversation, except for the washer on spin, which spoke of one thing: CO-VID, CO-VID, CO-VID.
When I brought home a Burdock burr that had fastened itself to my trailing scarf (I know, you saw that one coming) I had to tease out its spines, hooked sharp
among threads torn loose and ragged. Those threads will now forever bear those marks as the year’s unhitchings and requisite constrictions will be there, could we see them, on our hearts.

Ann Leahy. Photograph: Eric Luke


Ann Leahy’s first collection, The Woman Who Lived Her Life Backwards (Arlen House, 2008), won the Patrick Kavanagh Award. She grew up in north Tipperary and lives in Dublin