2021
POETRY OPEN
Honorable Mention
$25 Award
LEAF STORM
by David Butler

i.m. my mother
Some days after the diagnosis
set time, a death-watch beetle,
ticking, you set out undaunted
for the park. Your time of year –
air cold as water, the trees
touched with fleeting majesty.
As we rounded a beech copse,
a puckish wind stirred up and,
like Dante’s fugitives, drove all
about a streaming leaf storm,
shoal-dense and endless, brass
after brass, chattering, sheering
in great murmurations, showing
the raw grandeur in letting go.
David Butler is the author of three poetry collections: Via Crucis (Doghouse, 2011); All the Barbaric Glass (Doire Press, 2017); and Liffey Sequence (Doire Press, 2021). His second short story collection, Fugitive, is forthcoming from Arlen House.
August 2021