Tuesday Poem: Julius Caesar had a Pet Giraffe

the bicycle flung against jasmine,

the rain-swollen door pushed inwards,

dust flakes twirling in the yellow light,

the house gone still after the morning rush,

breakfast bowls thick with globs of milky oats,

the child’s quiz book demanding on the table.

Julius Caesar had a pet giraffe. True or False?

This is where the life begins -

the wooden stairs turning its familiar turn,

the upper door creaking as it’s always done,

the desk waiting for what might come alive

from the books, from yesterday’s scribbles

like fallen hair strands on the white board.

And there’s the old debris of work - apple butts

to bin, bitten pencils, new words to sharpen.

And the window to turn away from.

No distractions, it all starts over.

The back bends, hands hold the head,

the face rises, is reflected in the laptop screen.

Outside, somebody else’s bicycle whirls by,

while in here, the tap-tap of things beginning -

a giraffe printing curious across the page,

before savaged by lions in Caesar’s arena.

Enda Wyley was born and lives in Dublin. She has published five collections of poetry with the Dedalus Press, most recently Borrowed Space, New and Selected Poems. She has received the Vincent Buckley Poetry Prize, the Patrick Kavanagh Fellowship and several Arts Council bursaries.