Poem published in The Stony Thursday Book

I am delighted to say that a poem of mine called Record was published in The Stony Thursday Book 2025, an annual anthology of writing produced from Limerick. Thanks to the editors, John Liddy and Jim Burke, for accepting the poem.

Record

[after an RTÉ radio interview with Catherine Corless,

who discovered the Tuam Babies burial site]

On a walk some Sunday morning

I wondered what lay behind those walls,

pear trees, perhaps, or polished pews

marked with knees over generations.

I wrote a polite letter to the sisters

and got no response. I searched

for a crack, for an opening

just to let me in. At the archive

pages crinkled when turned,

bone white and delicate to the touch.

The print was so tiny. I tried

not to let it all fall apart.

In dusty corners, I searched

for some record of who they were

and found birth certs, death certs,

a map of a septic tank.

Little was recorded, but we all

knew yet pretended not to know.

Now this unhealed memory

is refusing to be buried.