Shane Leavy

Infrared Goggles in the Curragh at Night

One of the soldiers said: ‘Look,

‘it’s infrared.’ I dragged the goggles

on and gazed up at the drifting dusk:

at once the others glowed in gold and white

all hands and faces, eyes and steaming mouths;

then behind, astonished, I beheld

in twisted hawthorn silhouettes,

the blobs of glowing songbirds, sleeping,

white with heat in twilit gloom.

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Shane Leavy is a writer and researcher based in north Leitrim with poems accepted by Popshot: The Illustrated Magazine of New Writing, Ekphrastic Review, Poems from the Lockdown and It’s Twelve O’Clock; A Midnight Poetry Anthology.