‘The Shed’ by John Kelly

A coffee cup – ceramic and Greek –
is balanced on the saddle of a bike.

I can hardly move these days for bikes,
piled on each other like anonymous bones

in the Catacombs of Paris or Rome.
Ancient memories now of barrow, tumulus

and souterrain – my shambles of a hideout,
my through-other dog-house, my ruined lair.

This is my shanty, my bothy, my Batcave,
my dacha and my swineherd’s hut –

ramshackle meeting-house for aislings
and spiders, angels, demons and shades.

Here, of an evening, I have both flown
and fallen, sailed the seas and sunk.

To think that beneath this wasted mirror ball
a silent hedgehog killed a rattlesnake,

that swans once landed in a snowstorm –
went flying on a frozen lake.

From issue #9.5: spring/summer 2020

About the Author
John Kelly’s poetry has appeared in The Irish Times, Poetry Ireland Review, Winter Papers, Oxford Magazine and The Well Review. His first collection, Notions, was published by Dedalus Press in 2018. His novel From Out of the City was shortlisted for Novel of the Year at the Irish Book Awards 2014.