Stephen Carragher

1985

The worst Irish winter I remember 

And it’s not even my memory. 

So often has my mother recounted the tale, 

I can see the blinding white, hear the crunch of snow under welly boot. 

The pair of them climbing into the tractor 

to take my elder brother to the doctor in town. 

The silent porcelain countryside, the engine turning over, 

the gush of black smoke, the rattle of the tractor.

Stephen Carragher grew up in Monaghan. His work has appeared in Ragaire, Drawn to the Light and the Berkeley Poetry Review among others. He lives in Austria.