I Can't Grow a Poem by Ailbhe Wheatley

A large tree in the middle of green woodland. Large white text reads: I Can't Grow a Poem. Smaller text reads: Discussing disabled characters in fairy tales and folklore.

I can’t grow a poem –
I can only pick it up,
blindly
from the ground or from the ether,
writing off the heaviness that hangs about the heart.

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A SOFT LANDING

​I sigh softly with the earth
her heartbeat in my centre
and when all is lost and broken she gives me
yet another in-breath!
Lights the skies in colours of love -
 
and I can’t turn her away.

---

FOR ÉIRE

​Ireland
I am lost in your cool damp greenery
where ancient rocks relax on big fields
and sunset is a wild card I wish to catch.
 
I’ll never truly know you
though you call yourself my turf.
I’ll never know of another place so mysterious
 
and yet so safe, so sound.

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SHADOW
 
Sorry that you haven’t always seen
the sunniest side of me
sorry I’ve lately been bathed in dusk.
 
All I ask is that you see, it’s simply another side to the same
‘me’.

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FORESTED
​
The spiralled vine loves a tree to climb.
 
And me, well, I am forested.
My mind plants roots
in things long past
 
grows leaves before the season.

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About the author: 
Ailbhe is an emerging artist and writer from the west of Ireland. She recently completed a Masters in Authorial Illustration at Falmouth University. Her background in yoga teaching, mindfulness and living in the wild informs her current poetic practice. Through her words and art she seeks to magnify the ordinary, everyday, sublime - to find wonder in the familiar.