Ronnie McGinn's Poetry Page

Like life itself, poetry depends on a balance between the intellect and the senses, the mind and the body, thought and action. In the best poetry it is the sensuous element which predominates. This weeks poem from Sinead Ryan of Limerick illustrates the point. Sinead takes a very sensitive and personal emotional experience and balances it beautifully with well chosen words, to which we can all relate and share.

Sinead has worked both in Dublin and in Cork in the Civil Service for over seven years. She studied economics and French in UCC. For ten of the past twelve years she has been living in Cork a city which she has happily adopted as her own. She started writing poetry 14 years ago and found quite simply that she could not stop. Poetry is her release. The flavour of her writing can be very dark with inspiration coming both from within herself and her own experience and from countless outside influences. Her favourite poets are Kavanagh and Yeats. She looks forward in the future to having her works published.

A Time To Mourn

Silence moves like a presence
Filling the space between us.
The uncomfortable weight
Of words unspoken
Leave the air thick
With tense confusion -
With unknowing.
Pain lies unacknowledged -
Festering -
Abraded by each
Wordless moment of grief.
Grief of such magnitude that
Everybody tries to escape
Into the silence.
Be stoic...
Be strong...
Be brave - And be a fool
Because grief needs to scream;
Pain needs to cry.
Silence needs to shout
- And I need to mourn.

© Sinead Ryan