Searching for Bee Orchids on the Day My Childhood Home Is Sold

Martina Dalton

To walk the spaces between rooms

emptied of chairs. A child bewildered

by what is lost.

Lift each lip like a letterbox:

that familiar scent—of things on the turn.

Dwarfed

by almost every other thing.

Their rooms laid bare.

Siblings holding hands

one on one and suddenly—

four stems together like steps of stairs.

And even though

he has been dead

for seventeen years, I am surprised

to meet my father there.

To come upon them—precious,

growing up between the gorse:

lives unnoticed,

needs unmet. Still—to wait underground

for all those years, in such great numbers.

The miracle of their survival.

And the ghost of it:

faded now by sun, The Good News

the only book she had to read.

The only thing I took.

Mildewed pages stuck together.

Opening doors to rooms I know

I am seeing—for the last time.

At one with the grass; moon

shining through haze from the sea.

MARTINA DALTON lives in County Waterford, Ireland. Her poem ‘Wedding Dress’ won the Listowel Writers’ Week Poem of the Year at the An Post Irish Book Awards 2022. Her publication credits include The Irish Times, Irish Independent New Irish Writing, Poetry Ireland Review, The Stinging Fly, and Rattle.