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Hearing a Willow Warbler on Howth Head, April 2020
by Francis Devine
Half baffled by the wind,
there it is, first of the year,
the sallypecker’s trilling song,
flittering somewhere among
saffron whin, matted tangle
of bracken, couch and briar.
It is a thrilling, tonal emollient,
soothing lockdown despair,
lifting the spirit, a welcome
renewal, its first-thing-on-arrival
carnal clarion, unintended for us,
but a beautiful misplacement.
Francis Devine is a retired Trade Union Tutor with the ITGWU/SIPTU and a former editor of Saothar, the Journal of the Irish Labour History Society. 21st-century Poetry is edited by Andy Croft, email [email protected]
