Fallout
for Ellen and Grainne
Even my youngest, who's five,
her syllables still rickety, fidgeting
phrases with her tongue - even she burst
the silence with her speech balloons.
Her sentences were rubble. Into the room,
face dunced by the wild firing of the news,
she danced with her tarantella breath.
'On the mainland.' I caught myself
falling from a fifteenth storey ledge,
clinging to breeze. Perhaps a splinter group.
Perhaps a trick of the electronic air.
The lines across the sea are full
of flotsam conversations. But they
can't overhear the bombing of our hearts.