Bio
Brian Kirk is a poet and writer from Dublin, Ireland. His first poetry collection 'After The Fall' was published by Salmon Poetry in 2017. His poem "Birthday" won the Listowel Writers' Week Irish Poem of the Year at the An Post Irish Book Awards 2018. He was awarded a bursary from the Arts Council of Ireland in 2020 to write and film a sequence of formal poems on the Covid 19 pandemic. His short fiction chapbook 'It's Not Me, It's You' won the Southword Fiction Chapbook competition and was published in 2019 by Southword Editions. He blogs at www.briankirkwriter.com.
Brian Kirk
Night Brooding 1
The years light up like sparks around the room
when a built-up winter fire collapses
on itself, crackles, settles into gloom.
Fire beckons us, as a master claps his
hands and calls his dog to heel; he falters
for a moment, then obeys, perhaps his
feral instinct overcome, he alters
his behaviour, docile, eager to please.
Like us, who willingly put on halters
of work, duty, love, responsibilities
we gather to ourselves as the years pass –
more dogged Sisyphus than Heracles.
The future was unknown, beyond trespass,
while we lay dreaming idly in the grass.