Tales of Brigid crackle from the car radio
as we drive the roads, slick with dew,
through towns and villages – Baltinglass,
Blessington, Rathvilly, Tullow –
streets empty, as residents prepare
behind closed doors, for whatever
the new year will bring.
We arrive, expecting a carpark filled
with the emptiness of winter,
the slow sweep of grey coats
across gravel, only to be greeted
by the giddy joy of friends meeting up,
snowdrops waiting politely in the wings,
their shy beauty blinking through the mist.
Maurice Devitt is the curator of the Irish Centre for Poetry Studies site. His Pushcart-nominated poem, ‘The Lion Tamer Dreams of Office Work’, was the title poem of an anthology published by Hibernian Writers in 2015. His second collection ‘Some of These Stories are True’ was published by Doire Press in 2023.