Mobile Photography/Art – Saturday Poetry – ‘Silt Whisper’ by Ailbhe Darcy

I am introducing a new section, simply titled, Saturday Poetry. Each Saturday I will publish a poem and I will also try to link a mobile photography image, that has been uploaded to our Instagram hashtag #theappwhisperer during the week.

This week’s poem, Silt Whisper is by Ailbhe Darcy, it is from her book Imaginary Menagerie.

“One-Eyed Jack is an American board game, played with cards and poker chips It’s the two-eyed Jacks (clubs or diamonds) that are the official wild cards. Silt Whisper begins with a signal that breaking and making rules could be significant in the poem. Hearts and spades are the official one-eyed jacks, and we all know what they symbolise. If it’s a couple playing the game, the invention of their own rules would be a shared joke, and mark a developing intimacy”. 

To view the others we have published in this section, go here.

Silt Whisper

That summer one-eyed jacks were wild:

we learned new rules, left tea to brew.

Smoke stilled air. Leaves lay unturned.

Unemployment was another high.

I had been a storm in a polystyrene cup,

seeking scald, steam, instance, but now

We drew up lists; mapped out desire lines; skipped

interviews to collect blooms; paused before flight.

The only record of that time the silt of prophecy,

the memory of weight in our cupped hands.

For a short while we held the one breath:

I could never set it down.