Wolf Moon, January 2020
It will be a cold night
beneath this lupine gem,
that lustrous lunar egg,
past which birds in silhouette
fly and the foxes might cry
out across the bare landscape,
they are wont to lament
when a chill is coming.
We will sleep and dream
in a pregnant stillness,
lulled into resting with the earth,
this turned from the sun
northern hemisphere returning.
When my eyes close I see Australia
burning in the wildfires,
pity the kolas and kangaroos
scorched or dying of thirst.
The longed-for shaman comes,
aboriginal, chants hymns
to Mirabooka of The Southern Cross
and our shared alabaster deity.
Dingoes howl there, run to men
with snakes and spiders.
“Help us!” they all say.
My planet is singing the same message
all over, how we must put our ears
to the waters and to the stones,
how we must listen and heal each other.
Orla Fay is the editor of Drawn to the Light Press. She is the Poetry Town Laureate for Dunshaughlin, County Meath. Recently her work has appeared in Southword, Crow of Minerva, Abridged, Green Carnations and Vox Galvia. She is working on her second chapbook, What Became of the Horses, and received a professional artist development bursary from Meath County Council Arts Office and Creative Ireland earlier in the year. Her debut full collection is forthcoming from Salmon Poetry.
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