David Nash’s poems are rooted in an appreciation of the natural world, rooted in Ireland, rich in myth and folklore – poems that feel timeless.
A couple of examples:
The Plastic Bag Full of Plastic Bags
under the Sink
You know you’re Irish if you have one of these,
though you’ll also find you’re Armenian
or Hispanic or Jewish or Czech, because thrift
is universal. What, then, is Irish? Is it Dansk
biscuit tin of sewing detritus? Not outs
either? Stew is also out – it isn’t really an
innovation to boil all the food the you have left,
or at least not one so easily claimed. To ask
an old lad on the road directions, shoot the breeze
and end up drinking with him? #onlyinireland?
The past is better everywhere, and there’s no craft
in protesting so much difference. But there is risk.
Changeling
Easier than getting into
what sex was, I guess,
was to tell the cagier
children that the new baby
had washed up on the beach
with the seaweed.
Easier, and no less true:
even now, I don’t sleep well at all
and my go-to is to play dead
on a bed of egg-wrack
and wait for that night’s sea
to drag me back where I belong.
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