Embedded Files
Sitting in the Grass Barefoot
Birds agree and scale the moment
in a series of chirrs, a strimmer
over the way paring things back.
The blades between my toes
caress a thought I haven’t had in years,
her feet treading so lightly by the river
that the grass doesn’t bend.
The current’s flowing backwards
in my head and we’re falling
away from each other the way
districts become homogenised,
growing up to a pang of dread.
Our eyes catch like fish hooks
and we clink glasses, foreign
as the country we’re living in.
Leaving Connemara
for Eamon Grennan
Unable to take a photo I commit to memory
the sun – not long risen – casting reams of light
on brooklime, lesser skullcap, the spry
air fluent and itching for lichened rock, bright
fields by a feathery bog or dripping woodland.
A nameless summit rules the water, towers
from the depths of surrounding cloud
which gathers like forebears whispering flowers
to an inlet. The seeds of time winnow and drift
so often it’s hard to conceive how we got here
past furry bracken tumbling to a heft
of golden seaweed, stiff grass gentling its burr
towards reflection where a broken limb lingers
in an eddy and the ceremony of the dead
insists against all knowledge, points a finger
in the direction of heart and head.
Funny to love a view imposed by colonial
rule and feel at home. Ling, cross-leaved heath
and bell heather quiver as if from some carnal
impulse to hunch closer to earth’s breath
and take in what’s been taken for granted
in the race for modernity: pools and flushes,
flat and sloped inclines; swallow holes daubed
with roseroot and starry saxifrage; rushes
overcome with vague desire. In the distance
deer rut and spar among otters and hares,
stoats, wood mice and pygmy shrews
while shadows swing this way and that like char
on the landscape. Look up and take in
the meadow pipits’ non-descript sedentary
nature, skylarks and stonechats, a wren,
kestrels and peregrine falcons casually
homing their vision. Meanwhile, harmless
as small talk with American tourists in a bar,
freshwater pearl mussel waits in abundance
beyond crystalline schists within the scar
of an elongated mountain belt. Loose rocks
at the surface mingle with quartzite
and grey marble, the erratic nature of shocks
predictable fare given the reigning elite
and lower classes. Balancing the scales
involves driving from easy assumption
and being open to being wrong. Tall tales
pervade the past, echo down creation
along communities of ghosts blurring lines
of expectation. Those red petals could be
tiny hearts. If I’ve forgotten something,
let me come back and find it here endlessly.
Kevin Graham’s first collection, The Lookout Post, was published by Gallery Press in 2023. It was shortlisted for the Pollard Prize and won the Southword Debut Poetry Collection Award. In 2025 he won The London Magazine Poetry Prize. A second collection, Time’s Guest, was published in 2025.
Copyright © 2026 by Kevin Graham, all rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of Copyright law. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the notification of the journal and consent of the author.
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