EDWARD LEE - POEMS

Edward Lee's poetry, short stories, non-fiction and photography have been published in magazines in Ireland, England and America, including The Stinging Fly, Skylight 47, Acumen and Smiths Knoll.  His debut poetry collection "Playing Poohsticks On Ha'Penny Bridge" was published in 2010. He is currently working towards a second collection.

---

​STILLBORN

​So frail,
you seem painted on air
by a cheap brush
in a shaky hand;
 
I fear touching you,
least you break,
and so you pass
from this present
to the past,
untouched,
unknown,
but never unloved,
 
no, never.

​ONCE

Words of love
echo through
the chambers of her heart,
searching for a home,
somewhere to sit,
lie down, rest,
but find only dirty floors
and bare walls,
 
even failing to find
the door
they came through,
one bright summer day
a thousand lifetime's ago.
 ​

​LIVING FOREVER IN THE NIGHT

In my garden
I speak to the night,
throw my voice
into the moonless dark,
not looking for,
or expecting a reply,
simply wishing to add
something of myself
to the endless darkness,
my words turning
to winter, clouding
in the air,
 
and disappearing, disappearing,
the night taken it all
as its own,
 
and I turn
and reenter my home,
my skin prickling
as it moves from cold
to warm.
 
 ​

​CHANCE

​That photograph of you
and your children
stalled my lungs;
your eldest girl,
ten, eleven,
had eyes unlike yours
or your husband, 
 
eyes like mine,
lips too, and something subtle
in the face
if you knew
to look.
 
As my breath returned
I added the years,
the distance from
you and I,
to the point of now,
of I looking
at a photograph
of the woman I loved,
who once loved me,
but decided, in the end,
her husband was
her preferred future,
without him ever knowing
there was ever any other
possibility,
 
my lover,
and her children,
her daughter
with eyes like mine,
 
and the years totalling silently
in my head.
 
 
 

​UNSOUND

Somewhere along the way
we forgot
to lay foundations,
we simply found a spot
that caught the sun
just right
and we built
our house of hearts there.
 
Of course
it toppled,
fell in on itself;
it would have crushed us
had we been home,
but we had gone
our separate ways
years before,
our idea of love
simply that:
an idea,
 
and certainly not enough
to inhabit a house of hearts,
built upon strong foundations
or not.
 
 ​