On the Hill by Lorraine Carey

They brought back gold taps from America,

shipped a chaise longue too; but it looked

wrong in their whitewashed cottage, snug

under a dense thatch of sedge, rush and reed.

The old lady offered orange squash once, three parts

cordial to one part water. Our eyes teared up

with the saccharine spike and as she rummaged

for chocolate treats in a huge biscuit drum,

I sank into a grown-up chair, drank in

all the excess. They’re both under chiselled

granite now in a Church of Ireland plot,

grey as the mizzle of an autumn dawn

and not a gilded letter in sight, the lady

of the house turning in her grave.

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Lorraine Carey writes poetry, haiku and non fiction. Her work appears in Bracken, Magma, Spelt, Poetry Ireland Review and The Stony Thursday Book among others. Her craft often explores ecocentrism, landscape, belonging and species decline. She lives in Co. Kerry.