Driving to the hospital

I don't play music

though Leonard Cohen's last CD

is in the pocket of the car door

with it all getting darker

and the treaty needed

between your love and mine.

I don't play music

though Ludovico Einaudi is waiting,

hands poised above the piano,

the way yours used to be

before you played the Nocturnes—

Chopin, John Field.

I don't play

but the frosted trees strike

the rim of the sky like a bell

or a note on the edge

of a Tibetan singing bowl.

And another part of me

is kneeling down to pray.

Lani O' Hanlon

The Irish Times

Last night it woke me, a thimble of light cutting

through the skin in the curtain, on your side of the bed.

You slept on, unaware of its still nesting

like the white sea glass we found on Curragh strand.

But it must have affected you all the same;

two hares rose up in the field beyond,

a vixen cried out, her throat full of moon.

I touched the silver thumbprint on the back of your head.

Lani O' Hanlon 

Poetry Ireland Review 123