Home Thoughts

Jun 01, 2004

Why am I thinking of you tonight
when it’s been years ?
Why am I feeling it now,
here, in another country,
suddenly distracted by
the way your hand parted me,
slipping in as if
you were just returning home,
the look of remembering,
that dreamy, certain look
as your hand curved me,
split me into segments ?
And why am I thinking of it now,
when it’s been years,
and I’m whole now,
and in another country
when there’s no need of parting,
of wanting to be half?

Nessa O’Mahony was born in Dublin and lives in Rathfarnham where she works as a freelance teacher and writer. She has published three books: her first collection, Bar Talk, appeared in 1999; her second, Trapping a Ghost, was published in 2005; a verse novel, In Sight of Home, was published in 2009. A third collection, Her Father’s Daughter, is forthcoming from Salmon Poetry.