There is a darkness on the brightest of days,
maybe just a speck, but he knows it’s there,
a last wasp ghosting behind him,
tripping his mind with the fear of the sting.
He slows his step, turns around
and it’s gone, just a stranger laughing
or a blind spot in the mirror. Takes five
deep breaths (a recentring technique
he’d picked up on a talk-show and started to trust),
busies himself with other distractions, hoping
that starved of attention, it won’t slink back
into his peripheral vision, firstly as mote
then full-blown spectre, standing
in the middle of the room, spotlight fully on.
A past winner of the Trocaire/Poetry Ireland, Bangor Poetry and Poems for Patience competitions, Maurice Devitt is the curator of the Irish Centre for Poetry Studies site. His second collection, ‘Some of These Stories are True’, was published by Doire Press in 2023.