The Poetry Archive Now! WordView 2024 Entry
Poet’s Biography
Bernadette Gallagher is the author of The Risen Tree, (Revival Press, 2024) her debut poetry collection. She has received awards from the Arts Council of Ireland and Cork County Council. Her work has been published in numerous literary journals, recorded by the University College Dublin Poetry Archive and the Words Lightly Spoken podcast. In 2024 Bernadette was selected as curator of Poetry in the Park by Cork City Libraries.
Poem Description / Inspiration
This poem was written in 2024. The drawing mentioned in the poem was by the poet's husband, John Philip Murray. The drawing was of the poet on a beach in1985 and the story is part of the poet's life and the life of her mother, now deceased.
Poem Text
The woman is asleep on a pillow of sand.
The pencil draws a curve of her underarm,
a hollow with a shading of shadow, a line
bent where the elbow sinks into the paper
and the hand disappears to her brow.
Her hair is wet from salted water,
strands fall over eyebrows touched
by a dark pencil, eyelashes seal the lids closed.
Her mother who held her in her womb
for nine months, twenty-six years before,
now lies in her hospital bed
on this sunny summer’s day. Her belly hollowed out,
no uterus, hystera or womb.
No words to replace what is gone.