I could tell you how the whole earth seems to end
at this one place where the land falls
cleanly into a tumultuous thundering—
the relentless roar of furious millennia crashing
iced cobalt against three hundred million years
of vertical bituminous siltstone stubbornness,
all overlaid with a violence of vivid greenness
inconceivable until witnessed, where the sky splits
open above — brewing caliginous charcoal yielding
to an inevitability of iridescence, streaming
shards spearing simmering drizzle-laden mists,
all lit as if from within with an otherworldly luminosity
approximating divinity, a scene so sharp yet ethereal,
surreal, imprinted in a part of self within but apart
that might burst from this pulsing bone-suit, this
shadow-world flesh-mantle sheerly in the act
of reliving that reminiscence. I could tell you
all of that or I could say how much this exiled

soul aches for home.

This poem was first published in the light we cannot see, Salmon Poetry, 2021.

**

Originally from the west of Ireland and living in Australia for three decades, Anne Casey is the author of five poetry collections. Her work is widely published and awarded internationally, ranking in The Irish Times’ Most Read. Anne is a doctoral researcher in archival poetry and poetics of resistance at the University of Technology Sydney where she teaches creative writing. anne-casey.com

Another work by Anne Casey
‘Come and find me’
appear in the print version of P76 Issue 9
available for $20 (plus postage and handling)
from Rochford Cottage Bookshop

P76 issue 9: Poetries of place/ displacement/ diaspora/ odyssey: On-line Edition. Table of Contents