The Tuesday Poem

LETTING GO

I love the abandon

of abandoned things

the harmonium surrendering

in a churchyard in Aherlow,

the hearse resigned to nettles

behind a pub in Carna,

the tin dancehall possessed

by convolvulus in Kerry,

the living room that hosts

a tree in south Kilkenny.

I sense a rapture

in deserted things

washed-out circus posters

derelict on gables,

lush forgotten sidings

of country railway stations,

bat droppings profligate

on pew and font and lectern,

the wedding dress a dog

has nosed from a dustbin.

I love the openness

of things no longer viable,

I sense their shameless

slow unbuttoning:

the implicit nakedness

there for the taking,

the surrender to the dance

of breaking and creating.

(Reprinted with permission of the Gallery Press)

* Michael Coady was born in 1939 in Carrick-on-Suir, County Tipperary. Winner of the Patrick Kavanagh Award for Poetry in 1979 and also of Listowel Writers’ Week and RTÉ Francis McManus short story awards, he has published five collections with The Gallery Press.