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Poem of the Week - October 28, 2008

Catherine MacCarthy

The Freedom of the City

He slips out the back gate

with a young woman,

fair hair, pouting lips

and long ethnic skirts,

 

an old man with keys in his hand,

his bald head turned

to check the lie of the land,

that one backward glance

 

cautious as the bushy-tailed

red fox whose eyes met mine

in our garden after rain

one November afternoon

 

in a deluge of green

between leaf fall and sunshine

before he turned to light again

high on the boundary wall.

 

 

    Catherine MacCarthy
    [View Author]

    This week's poem is "The Freedom of the City" by Catherine MacCarthy, which originally appeared in TMR 26:3 (2003).  MacCarthy has published three collections of poetry: This Hour of the Tide (Salmon, 1994); the blue globe (1998, Blackstaff Press), and Suntrap (2007, Blackstaff Press).  In addition to poetry, she has also written a novel: One Room an Everywhere (2003, Blackstaff Press), and a joint book: How High the Moon (Poetry Ireland, Sense of Place Award, 1991).  She was awarded arts council bursaries for poetry in 1994 and 1998, and her poems have been published widely in Ireland and the U.S. She was Writer in Residence for Dublin City, (1994), and University College Dublin (2002), and she leads workshops at the Irish Writers Centre.

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