DAVID J COSTELLO
Miracle
I needed a miracle
so they prepared me for one.
These fishers of men
donned Sowesters and wellies
and drew their indelible nets across my chest
trawling for the red pearl.
Filleting me for the curing.
Snapping my rib veined casket shut
along its spinal hinge
like a sprung clam.
My vascular scar throbbing with their salt.
Childhood’s End
Almost unnoticed
childhood’s end
excused itself
in a whisper
and left the room.
My adult
endures its absence
with a pain
feeling doesn’t
understand.
Moonlight on the Bosphorus
Heaven touched spark
to dry water
branding its leaving
with hives of halos
little lifebelts
saving no one
markers of a sinking
still snagging at passingness
there should be wreckage
survivors clinging
not just this assumption
of drowning
this vast anointment
of the nearly dead.
David J Costello lives in Wallasey, Merseyside, and is co-organiser of local poetry venues Bards of New Brighton and Liver Bards. His work has been published in several anthologies and poetry journals including Quantum Leap, Reach Poetry and Envoi. He has been short-listed and placed in various competitions, most recently being short-listed for the 2011 Grist Poetry Prize and winning the 2011 Welsh Poetry Competition.
