I came back in a taxi from visiting
my cocooning father
to find the woman next door hanging
a string of faery lights around the fences
of her back yard and she was smiling-
I asked her was she preparing
a birthday party or some other calendrical
celebration I had forgotten about
on which so much of who we are is still hanging
but she just shook her smiling head
as she continued to weave and hang
her hundred or so lights in patterns of V
around our shared fence
before she switched them on
and lit up the dark of all of our back yards.
…………
Deirdre Hines is a poet and playwright. ‘ The Language of Coats’ was published by New Island Books in 2012. She sits on the organisational committee of North West Words, an arts organisation that promotes new writing in Letterkenny, Co. Donegal. Her poetry reviews can be read in Riggwelter, PN Review, Rochford Street Review and Riggwelter.