by Kieran Fionn Murphy
You’d laugh and shake your head if I told you
that, in Cork, two doves kissed good morning
on a sunny wire over Dean Street,
but they did,
as a workman’s gloved hands pulled up
sheets on a building on South Main Street,
and a surge of cars jostled snouts
beside the courthouse steps.
An Airbus roared
across the Western Road, turned right above
the Mardyke, and made for a cloud
grazing Sunday’s Well,
and then, improbable, I heard him
warble, a blackbird call. I stopped, spotted him
up on Daly, Derham, Donnelly – Orpheus
of the eaves,
orange beak scissoring
the steely, dusty, concrete, shadowed scrim
of locked existence, defying
jackhammers
and taxis, singing beauty,
love, and loss. I paused, applauded,
laughing, then flew home to you.
We never once looked back.
Kieran Fionn Murphy grew up in NY and now lives in Dingle with his family, where he co-founded Murphys Ice Cream. He is currently pursuing an MA in creative writing at UCC and hasn’t yet mended the folly of his ways.