Red Kite, Avonmore

Rosamund Taylor

Years spent waiting—missed trains swinging out

of Connolly, silent platforms, tense cold. I let

my breasts and thighs be bruised and called it

joy—and then you. On Rosslare Strand burying

feet in sand, my skin came to life as your hand slid

under my shirt. Oh your hands—on the steering wheel,

winding bobbins for your sewing machine, keen

and sure on laptops. I say names of birds to you,

holding in my mouth flutter-heat, wing-blur

and you give them back to me in Polish:

strzyżyk, szpak, sroka. We climb the boreen;

above us, a red kite, wind-sinuous, seeking

roadkill. The colour of her, like your eyes—gold brown,

black brilliant. All that is good in me is yours.

ROSAMUND TAYLOR’S debut collection, In Her Jaws (Banshee Press 2022), was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Poetry Prize for a First Collection and the Yeats Society Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in Butcher’s Dog, Magma, The Rialto, Poetry Ireland Review and MsLexia.