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2nd Place Poetry
Through a Lens in Omey by Paul O'Brien
I wish I’d been there, watching
and oh so close in the Omey dusk,
when, with her breath held
and her finger to the shutter –
having lain in cover by the midden dune
waiting for the corncrake’s rasping cry
to betray him like an apprentice Romeo
sold out by the treacherous creak
of a slack, sprung bed, and having seen him,
daubed all black and rust and dun,
hop from the sanctuary of the iris flags
and strain his pliered bill to the darkening sky,
as if to pluck from orbit the whetted sickle moon –
she was too in awe to press.
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