☛ October, 2024 issue (Vol. 5, No. 2) will be published on 10 November, 2024 (Sunday).

Pegasus 2 at Powerscourt

Pegasus  2 at Powerscourt

- Randolph Healy (Ireland)

Students bob up and down, boisterous in thickets

of language they think foreign to us.

A man and a woman, leaders, puzzle over

Berlin Hugo Hagen fecit 1869

and mile upon mile of emulsion is permanently altered

by light bouncing off dazzling smiles.

"Fabless", he says, "fabless", while she, behind guide book,

motions left, so left they go, leaving the zinc chargers,

rain-stained wings straining against stillness

not-veins not throbbing on their thighs and bellies.

Images of perfection untrouble

the breezes that riffle life's lexicon.

Generations rattle past like notes

in a robin's call (run your fingernail

along a comb) while the wind still gusts

species streaming like bubbles from its touch

each rainbowed shape (including us) a prelude to another.