Here, on the light-skinned beach at Inchydoney, with the tide
So far out it looks like it might never return, even
If you don’t believe in God you must admit
Someone is really good on the details.
Take that cormorant sweeping the waves, head
Tilted towards a sky of mirrors, with all its skim
And swiftness lowered, almost cresting, almost touching.
And now another, following the same path, a path invisible
To the eye, spun in colour and the power of flight.
And down they come, holding their wings out to dry
In September’s fast fading.
I think they must be a pair, see how they bend their question
Shaped heads, too close to be anything but lovers.
Though your hand has been in mine all day, I suddenly feel it,
Warm and wonderfully alive, like a small bird in its nest.
Commendations for 'A Storm in Arcadia'
‘Sometimes you will find me working on the edges, / with all the love and intensity of a zealot, /a thrilling of words lighting my room’: Ron Carey states in his ars poetica, “The Trade“. Fables and legends from Abyssinia to Ireland that haunt him are woven through these lines. His prodigious imagination investigates the perception of scientists, filmmakers, and philosophers with a keen sense of wonder. In the process, his love of living, love of the world, of those dearest to him, joy in the moment, is palpable in poem after poem.
Catherine Phil MacCarthy : Winner of the Lawrence O’Shaughnessy Award for Poetry and the Yeats Thoor Ballylee International Poetry Prize.
And though there might be A Storm in Arcadia, Ron Carey’s astounding new collection elicits the magic, mystery and mischief in the extraordinary business of being. Carey’s exquisite poetry, line to line, poem to poem, reminds us that joy and a readiness to be surprised are enough “reasons to believe in the everlastingness of all things”.
Eleanor Hooker: Winner of the Michael Hartnett Award and the Markievicz Award for Poetry.
