Ever Ending Story - mag 160

©Shers Gallagher 2013

Once lost in the fantasy of undoing
we are no longer innocent of life
and perhaps one day shall rise to spread wings 
beyond the tales of dragons coming to rescue us
from our realities

Aisling Books – Magpie Tales

Icicle Shadows

©Shers Gallagher 2013

Shadows of icicles drift rhythmically 
throughout the lateness of winter
and into its frostbitten nights. 
They blanket the soil and bury its past 
deep within the Terra Firma
that we have dug our feet into
while praying for spring to come. 


Aisling Books

Old Crone in a Dark Mansion - Mag 156

© Shers Gallagher 2013


She lives in a dark mansion,
alone and forgotten by everyone
but herself.
She lived with another in exile
and all was good until he died.
That was not discussed in the contract
of her immigration, 
a clause that perhaps he would one day die
and leave her altogether.
She keeps one light on now,
one light only,
to spare the utilities while nickel and diming the dole 
to the nth penny.
The car he left her too, 
but it does not run, 
it being rutted in the road and lacking for petrol.
They'd planned to pave its trail,
but so many sidetracks had occurred along the way. 
And she is no longer of the age that her beauty will save her.
She remains the ageing crone that can only be pitied in fiction, 
in a Flannery O'Conner novel. 

Aisling Books - Magpie Tales

Forbidden Fruit - Mag 155

© Shers Gallagher 2013

He saw you there, 
forbidden fruit,
forbidden as the day's ride away from home. 
He called and you responded,
your answer as delicious 
as a collect call full of change. 

Aisling Books - Magpie Tales

Terminal Wasteland

© Shers Gallagher 2013

No longer burning up,
no longer freezing down,
no longer a body of wasteland,
I am freed of the prison of personal destruction,
from the itchy, pockmarked and sickly feeling 
walking close to death.
I have survived to kill the virus
that had encamped under my skin.
And the weight is returning,
the weight is now returning.
But my hair is falling, 
falling out like from a fall-out shelter.
Oh my, oh my.
What's to become of it all? 
It'll grow back...surely.
I'll kiss the sun.
I'll see the day again
to re-embrace life after all this nesting
in a terminal wasteland. 

Aisling Books

Hush - Magpie Tales 154

© Shers Gallagher 2013

Hush the halls of sleeping poets

like columns of ancient Sequoias,

seeding their voices through the mind song

into whispering leaves of paper

centuries years old. 

The library is a forest trail

of trained muses

who empower the imagination 

wherever they sprout. 

Aisling Books - Magpie Tales

Running with Carrot Tops

©Shers Gallagher 2013

This is not a bottle and a carrot,
neither is it a bottle turning into a carrot
nor carrot turning into a bottle
on a table in front of a mountain scene.
It is an image of a painting by René Magritte,
a witty and thought provoking Belgian
of the early 20th century
who believed in wanting to take us on a journey
to shake up and challenge our life’s preconceptions.
So what is the obvious here?
And why did the surrealist not choose an apple or an orange,
but a bottle and a carrot, as his painted theme? 
Am I falling into my own trap of ‘precooked’ ideas
when at first glance I think ‘phallic’?
Ah, yes, he’s got me. :)

Aisling Books