THE BADB OF ADARE

By Mary Denise Lyons

I sit with my one shot soy vanilla latté

in the winter sun, sunglasses on the table.

Cars flash by, chariots of the chiefs of modern Ireland.

I watch their proud parade of prosperity,

Until I feel it -

Pin pricks between the shoulder blades.

I look up, and there she is.

Badb, Morrigan, Scald Crow.

Her baleful eye impales me;

cold, hard, implacable.

Its iron grey speaks to me

of sword and shield,

mist and shadow,

fortresses of stone.

Millennia of contempt

strip away my ipad,

my phone,

the froth of modernity,

until my bones lie naked,

stripped of their flesh

in a field of ancient slaughter

with the Badb wheeling overhead,

the winter sun glinting

on the darkness of her feathers,

the ice of her eyes.

#darkpoetsclub