Carrigaline Cemetery, near Kinsale
LAVINIA KUMAR
It was in the cemetery
on the way to Cork
up the hill filled with weeds,
I tripped over brambles,
was stung by nettles.
Beyond the cemetery, the museum,
the shoes of Patrick Cotter O’Brien –
eight foot Kinsale man,
borne by fourteen strong men,
to his grave in lead coffin
(to deter body-snatchers;
who broke it by and by).
Below, the harbor, the great stones
framed what my mother loved –
water in still allure, the blue, brown
dories shaping the slow shadows
she drew and painted for us.
Lavinia Kumar’s books are The Celtic Fisherman’s Wife: A Druid Life (2017), and The Skin and Under (Word Tech, 2015). Chapbooks are Let There be Color (Lives You Touch Publications, 2016) and Rivers of Saris (Main Street Rag, 2013). Her poetry has appeared in several US and UK publications such as Atlanta Review, Colere, Dark Matter, Edison Literary Review, Exit 13, Flaneur, Kelsey Review, Lablit, New Verse News, Orbis, Peacock Journal, Pedestal, Pemmican, Poetry 24, Symmetry Pebbles, Lives You Touch, and US1 Worksheets. Her website is laviniakumar.org.