For Paul Brookes’ challenge, the image I chose to write to is a painting of the Children of Lir. You can read all the poems here and see the images that inspired them.

Fionnuala

How did you manage alone in the wilds
and three young boys who would never be men?

How did you know with no stars in the sky
to steer them from one sheltered nest to the next,
when the winter came fierce and the ocean swelled high?

How did you live with a twice-broken heart
cast out from your home to never return
and the years that weighed down on your father’s head
till they buried him under a cairn on the hill?

Time flew for those that you loved, and you flew
in the guise of a swan in the path of the storm,
as the world turned, forgetting the old ones and you.

Who…