Breaking, Not Broken
Because no cuckoos call from the downs’ blue woods,
my heart breaks, aches with sorrow
and waiting, waiting for that cool voice
in the dusk of early day.
Not now: there is no call,
as if spring cannot return again.
But dawn also breaks, light streaming & soaking all.
Still half-shadowed, a pool glitters—glass shatters:
a frog’s greedy leap, ripples
as from pebbles.
Beyond these gardens, an early ploughman
breaks the sod for sowing bright spring barley.
Leafless fledglings splinter shells
with toothpick beaks;
wings flutter feebly,
flightless.
Suspended or reaching,
sycamore leaf-buds, too, break
silver-to-green on the sky’s new blue.
And in the hedge, more wings: wet,
tissue-fine, drying in the wind:
an orange butterfly has split its chrysalis.
Waves surge & flow, billow, cave in,
crash on rock & shoreline
yet heave whole again, to hurl again—
to break again.
Day breaks but has not come apart:
is healing me with blackbirds’ somnolent song
murmuring from hidden nests,
at ease even among cracked shells.
Long promises of prophecy hold:
all things do break but are not broken.
Fresh bread may be torn, yes, but first was risen;
red wine spilled, yet still is sipped—
and a rock-stopped tomb is cloven wide
with no one left inside.
Fallen all to pieces, this ruined world
I know too well is mended—utterly.
© Lizzie Ballagher
One of the winners in Ireland’s 2024 Fingal Poetry Festival Competition and in 2022’s Poetry on the Lake, Lizzie Ballagher focuses on landscapes, both psychological and natural. She was a Pushcart nominee in 2018. Having studied in England, Ireland, and the USA, she worked in education and publishing. Her poems have appeared in print and online in all corners of the English-speaking world. Find her blog at https://lizzieballagherpoetry.wordpress.com/
Amethyst Review 