Oh Lord of the bright and the dim
And the low grey-wind

We see You well in clean sunlight
We know You well in the yellow of spring
We hear You well in the dance of the wren

But through the winter vapours
We strain in search of praise
Mist and mud, empty trees and boggy headlands
Scatter the praise
But not forever.

We have diluted the praises
In salty window-pane rivers
We turned loose our inner fires 
Like evening smoke in the hearth
We have paused behind a blurry countenance
Waited for pulsating happiness

Forgive us, Oh Lord
For we know that You have not stepped away, nor
Hidden behind clouds, nor
Hibernated under the mud

Now we turn our faces to Your Blazing Spirit
And we wipe our eyes, the windows and windscreens
With white cloths of song
We turn puddles into school-joy
Low skies into one boundless sheet of paper

Now and forever we will write the sky with 
Scatterings of Your Praises
We will cover the white and 
The blank blue and
Never run out of sky
Always filling up sky

In the Name of our Lord,
the Creator of this season
and the next,

Amen.

if blindness comes to
glaze my judgement,

my sniffer will be ready
to take on a full-time duty of

watching autumn
and formal friends
and ginger 
and broom closets
and cat coats

pass through my senses

I thank God that I’m not a German Shepherd. This heightened sense of smell has been hitting my nerves.

To chronically fight headaches, migraines, and dehydration has been a part of my life. On headache days I smell more than the seven colours of the rainbow.

This is the sixth and final Imagist poem.

When I am too quiet or
Too proud to ask questions,

I memorise their shoes.

Be sure your shoes will find you out.

I like the stars.
They don't die as easily
As turtles,

But those satellite fleas

Are crowding out
The turtles of the sky.

Do you know how the phrase “save the turtles” first gained popularity?1

Since that incident (but not as a direct result of the incident), drinking from a plastic straw has become a rare luxury in the EU.

My feet weigh
more than the
Hook Lighthouse.

At least it
still runs.

The Hook Lighthouse, in Wexford, is the oldest operating lighthouse in the world. I’m partial to the lighthouse, and I watch its light from the Dunmore East Harbour promenade.

began a lumpy boulder
too colossal to miss
with jagged shadows

the pebble stuck in
my sock

aging in reverse

“The Lifespan of a Pebble” is the first of six poems I wrote during the weekly Rabbit Room Poetry Hour.1

Last week our host gave us a prompt to write Imagist poetry such as Ezra Pound and T. E. Hulme wrote. Since the style requires concrete but concise images, I wrote more than one and will drop them here this week.

You might not call yourself a poet, but I’m certain you could write Imagist poetry.

I want to proclaim the art of simple and original celebrations.

The year I turned twenty was the first time I experienced the effect of birthday celebrations at Dunmore East Christian School— 11 November, 2022. That autumn, I had come to Dunmore East for three months as a substitute teacher in the Resource Room here at DECS. Stepping into a school on the other side of the Atlantic for a short time terrified me. I tried to mask my fear as any person would, but deep down my 19-year-old self was traumatised in coming here.

The community and school welcomed me wonderfully, and I grew attached to the community culture that I saw here. The relationships that were built in that short time surpassed all my clueless expectations that I carried before coming.

From my co-teachers I heard about the reputation of unconventional birthday celebrations in this community of the world, but I didn’t give it much thought when my birthday arrived. I believe my birthday was on a Friday that year. That morning, I was greeted by a colourfully decorated classroom as well as a challenge to find twenty googly eyes in the room. My housemates get the credit for that.

At some point in the day, Grant and I were startled by a raucous eruption of the entire school into the small room. They brought with them a plate piled high with alfajores that were baked by a school father. They handed me a jar filled with slips of paper saying “what we like about you.” The powdered sugar all over the green carpet became a mark of celebration that day.

And that concluded my birthday. So I thought.

On Monday, the same raucous eruptions greeted Grant and I in the middle of Language Arts Class. This time, two secondary students told me to stand while they blindfolded me. They “kidnapped” me from my classroom and led me outside where the Ideal Woodcraft work van waited. They guided me into the back of the van and sat me in an adirondack chair. Mr. Anthony Miller was the kidnapping “chauffeur.” Lydia and Hania were the designated escorts. The music that was being played in that dark kidnapper van left an impression on me. It was the Schwartz Family. The escorts answered none of my questions, but I did hear muffled snickers. I was driven around for about ten minutes. The van came to a stop. I heard the sound of a small room then the sound of a larger room when we walked through silent doorways, but I was clueless about the location. They removed the blindfold. The whole school looked at me. I hated that moment. We were back at school in the cafeteria. All expression of excitement vanished from my face. Someone thought I was going to cry. I was truly uncomfortable in that particular moment, but I eventually pulled myself together as they sang the song for birthdays. The unexpected spotlight caught me off guard, but I enjoyed the adventure and appreciated the thought that they had put into the celebratory kidnapping.

In 2023, the surprise-part of the birthday had toned down a bit. I don’t remember how the surprise actually happened, but there was a party. And I remember cutting cake for everyone and eating it as they went around the table and once again said, “what we like about you.” I still remember the kind words spoken by some of the students and teachers that year. I can’t remember the gifts that were given. Well, I do remember that Amanda gifted me a week of packed lunches.

Last year, 2024, I was told not to worry. They said that nothing scary or uncomfortable would happen. Once again, I walked into a classroom well decorated in celebration by my housemates. Awhile later, as the students arrived that morning, they all poured into my little classroom and handed me a stem of a flower or greens to add to the vase on my desk. Before first break, the secondary girls and Ms. Katina knocked on my classroom door, informing me that I am to leave the classroom and follow them to the library while Ms. Katina takes my classroom. The girls led me to the library where Gina and Jackie greeted me. For the next thirty minutes, I sat in a cushioned rocking chair, drank tea, and chatted with Gina and Jackie. Back in my classroom, decoration was taken to another level as balloons and banners were hung, candles lit, and 22 birthday notes were hidden throughout the classroom. The last few birthday notes were found in books and behind charts weeks later. Cake and kind words were shared at lunchtime.

This year, 2025, my birthday landed on a Tuesday. On Monday, lunchtime came with decorations, the birthday song, cake, tea, and kind words. They said they weren’t trying very hard to surprise me. The morning of my birthday, Ms. Katina put up some window art. On the left window, she drew the mountains of Virginia and the Atlantic Ocean. On the right window, she continued the Atlantic Ocean and finished with the cliffs of Dunmore East. A stick figure walked along the cliffs. I dismissed my students for Bible Class at the start of the day, and 5 minutes later the whole school shows up in my classroom with balloons and the song for birthdays. Then, each student handed me a bit of paper with an original poem. I can’t think of another gift from students that could possibly bless me more. Each of them wrote a poem for me. Those poems will be the gifts that keep on giving laughter and contentedness as I read them repeatedly from now until I can’t read anymore.

Brendan made tiny paper column and filled it with 10c coins and a €1 coin. The paper column had a net worth of €2. Jolisa gave me homemade salsa. Abigail gave me her beautiful watercolour painting of a watermelon slice. Mr. Jantzi gave me a Canadian Toonie in exchange for the puzzled look that I gave him when he first talked about Loonies and Toonies. Grant brought me fresh warm oatmeal cookies that his mother had baked that morning. Molly and Henry gave me a bag of nuts and a bag of homemade bath salts. Mr. Zook gave me a lovely wooden pointer that was recycled from a broken, church-entrance hanger since I had complained about my need of a pointer for classes. Heather delivered a chai latte from Insomnia. I took the lid off and shared sips with my students. Henry had never tasted a chai latte before. He decided it tastes like carrot cake. Nearly every time I took a sip, he would whisper loudly, “carrot cake.” Soon it changed to a chant that broke classroom rules of quietness: “A-B-C-D-E-F-G, I smell carrot cake in your tea.”

My co-teachers over the years were celebrated in other unique ways such as:

• Student-created treasure hunts that took teachers to unusual spots on the surrounding property

• A court-trial of satirical charges against the teacher, that was held in Anthony’s living room, with dressed-up board members as judges and escorts

• Strategic fog machine set-up of chairs and metre sticks, set to automatically fill the room with fog when the teacher walk in the door (FAIL— DUE TO FIRE ALARMS AND A KINDERGARTEN TEACHER WHO DIDN’T KNOW THAT SHE SHOULD NOT ENTER THE PRINCIPAL’S CLASSROOM 30 MINUTES BEFORE HE DOES.)

• Classroom that was pre-filled with fog and decorations before the teacher arrived (PARTIAL SUCCESS— Even though our attempts to think ahead and cover the sensitive infrared smoke detector didn’t keep the fire alarm from screaming happy birthday.)

• Student who pies the teacher during birthday song

• Happy Birthday banner that floats past the cafeteria window during lunch-time while another student plays the birthday song on her tin-whistle

• Teacher driver who was kidnapped by school board members on the way home from the school’s carol singing at the nursing-home

• Teacher who had a birthday on the field-trip day and received a basket of decorated, hard-boiled eggs during our picnic lunch because he eats lots of hard-boiled eggs

• Students who brought 22 containers of leftover to provide free packed lunches for the teacher

Ask the alumni of Dunmore East Christian School for their stories. They would happily give you more details.

Celebrations of this sort stay with me long after the birthdays. I can’t speak for the whole world, but I am honoured by real gifts.

Simple gifts should never loose their power.

Shouldn’t we step back from taking the easy route of throwing money into gifts. Candles, mugs, blankets, gift cards, shoes, clothing, body wash and all the other things on which we fall back for our classic gifts could be swapped out for words and paper and coins and sticks.

Shouldn’t we be able to hand our friends a glass of water as we wish them “many happy returns of the day”?1

Of course, this is coming from someone who writes to breathe, someone who is overstimulated in grocery stores, someone who feels more alive by stretching her arms to match the horizon, someone who has an aversion to balloons and surprises.

This might not apply to you. But maybe, if you are one that would find it strange to be handed a glass of water or a 10c coin on your birthday, this applies to you more than anyone else.

The community here in Dunmore East has taught me this.

The sky is never as near as
When fluffy fog folds over the land.

Each pebble in the carpark
Was once a boulder too colossal to miss.

Bird's have space bubbles too,
Especially during telephone wire breaks with large families.
They shift reverently when another one arrives.

All Uncles are secretly
Quite proud to be an Uncle.
Some Uncles are not very good
At being secretive.

Every puddle's favourite time of existence
Is the time when greater Things like
Bathing birds, wellied feet, and tyres
Empty them of the rains that gave them existence.

A door handle is one of the many classic mechanisms on which
No one I know has written a research paper.

Once you realise you are a poet,
Every organism, breathing or lifeless,
Instantly becomes poetry.
And poet friends fly words across oceans
For you to read.

.

.

.

.

folds each bird’s secretive existence written instantly

tear open a fresh bag of coffee beans, 
crack the windows to let the night breeze slide into our dim living rooms, 
buy a new pack of rubbers and wooden pencils for school, 
gather the last wildflowers before September blows them down, 
hang our hammocks between pines for another life-pause in the forest, 
make a checklist of all the spider-webs we should sweep away from our houses, 
eat sweet corn until the patch turns brown, 
help children fill a quart jar with lightning bugs, 
savour the sipping of garden tea a little longer, 
go hiking without jackets, 
lay in the warm, green grass and stare at blueness above, 
think of all the teachers we know who are excited for another school term, 
sit on the bottom porch step and read stories to our sister’s children, 
plant winter pansies like our mothers do, 
go for a swim in the sea before the water turns to winter, 
watch the Thursday sailboat races, 
finish the fat book we started reading in June, 
scrub the sea-salt from our window panes, 
thank God for the August that will be.

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You probably haven’t ever heard this particular idiom. I first heard this version in a conversation with a friend. We were discussing this question: “What is something you wish everyone knew about you?”

Recently, I’ve been on a bit of a quest to be more genuine and honest with the people around me. Is writing on Substack an ideal place to start? I doubt it. Then again, I doubt a lot of things that I impulsively am inspired to do. (In 3 days, I’ll probably regret writing this post.)

I’m scared to write stuff that others will read.

Between my fingers and my head, I carry loads of fears about letting other people read what I write. I also carry plenty of ideals; and five-day-old-soggy-inspirations that fall apart like bread in cold milk; and fancy, catastrophic, unnecessary words that somehow try to make me believe that they’ll turn me into some writer.

One of my insecurities as a writer is that I use too many conjunctions when I talk, or write, or think. Another insecurity is that I try to fit far too many adjectives into one sentence; meanwhile, the voice of Chekov whispers in my ear, “show, don’t tell.” One never includes the paint and carpet in a blueprint. I’d like to believe that someday what I write will be concise, impactful.

I know another reason why I find it difficult to share what I write. Only recently have I allowed myself to share any poetry with others, even my mom. So far, most of what I have been inspired to write comes from deep and dark places of pain at stupid-o’clock in the night. Why ever would I share personal bits on a public platform that belong in a journal? I’d be mortified. The writer inside of me needs more exercise than sad, personal, unpredictable poetry. The writer inside of me needs discipline, honesty, joy, and action even when there’s no inspiration.

Some might ask, “Well, what is the easiest thing for you to write?” That’s a no-brainer for me, school stories—easy. Why?

1. I love my students, and I love teaching. (I can quickly say that since I’m now half-way through my summer holidays.)

2. They’re really funny. The comedic relief that I get nearly every day from my students is superlative.

3. School stories are original with my students rather than with me. All I need to do play along with them and write down what they said. I may as well become a journalist.

4. My classroom is where a curious version of myself, that I thought was dead, came alive. My students pulled her straight out of migration, and I’m sure about that.

5. Stories communicate an elementary faith to a universe driven to finding safety in logic. Little stories live inside my students, and my students read the world as a thousand little stories. If I become too mature for a story, I may as well suffocate in a Walmart bag. (I freely credit authors such as Lewis, Chesterton, L’Engle, N.H.Nye, and Tolkien for planting this belief within me.)

One final truth I must admit is that I set this post to an odd-numbered scheduled time delivery so that nobody could see the real timestamp. I may be kin to a moth.

I hope you don’t have to fill your car with fuel today. Happy Monday!

-Ms. Emily

I miss you, mama.
Your well-worn daisy housecoat
Framed each morning hug.

You ground coffee
Sunday night for
Monday morning’s silence.

You took us to Switzerland
To run with Heidi in the Alps,
While we sat cross-legged and
Folded yesterday’s laundry.

You pray for us with a
Faith that would have split
The big walnut tree
We felled last month.

You’ve shown us the light.
You taught us to walk through fear.
You’ve given us the biggest reason 
To long for home.

I miss you, mama.

p.s. I wrote this poem for my dear mother several years ago when I was away from home.

Afternoons at school don’t come easy for me. I wish I would love them, but I don’t. Task lists stare at me, and I feel uncomfortable being stared at. I aim to have the stack of grading done by 4:00, and I dislike grading. So before beginning any of those important, ordinary teacher things, I write.

I write down all the funny stuff first, then I eventually complain about how badly my smart lads behaved during every single period of that day, including the breaks. Other times, I treat it like a journal, simply writing about me and my happiness or grievances.

Here are fragments of dialogue from Tommy and Henry, that I preserve for after 3:00, when it’s more acceptable to laugh about their brilliant, unexpected behaviour.

• In the middle of the day, Tommy kept standing up without reason and walking around all over the classroom saying, “red light (then he would pause mid-stride), green light.” (And continue his way back to his desk.)

• Ms. Emily with her back turned: “Go back to your desk, Tommy.”

  Tommy: “You can’t see me, you don’t know where I am.”

  Ms. Emily: “Even if I was blind, I’d know you’re not in your desk because I can hear you.”

  Tommy: “Oh, I’d love a blind teacher.”

• Henry knows he’s expected to use a ruler for a specific section in the lesson. He broke his ruler last week; however, I’m startled to find the metre stick completely blocking the aisle as he smugly draws a perfect line from thatch to patch.

• “This is like chicken, when I bite into it, the skin comes off.”

  *He proceeds to ‘bite’ his Maths book and the book slides out of the staple-less cover and onto his desk.

• Tommy announces after lunch, “Ugh, my belly feels sick. There’s a gluten free taste in my belly.”

• In the tiny minute between Maths class and his time to go to Ms. Katina, Tommy whispered loudly, “Milo, you can only fold a notecard seven times.”

  I tried it, and he was right.

That’s it for today. I have work to finish, and a birthday party to attend.

-Ms. Emily

every time I cross the threshold
of yet another root to surrender—
another patch of blue inevitably
weaves itself with bold tenderness 
into my rhinoceros grey,
like a stomp on new carpet.

Hi, I’m Emily.
I write so that I can breathe.
With all the pressure in my head, 
I need to sit in the dark to decompress and write.

I teach primary school in Dunmore East, Ireland.
My students’ words find a way into my understanding of the world,
and I attemp to become as original as they are.

Poetry surges within me like a meteor shower. 
The radiant of the meteor shower generally resides below the horizon, 
but may rise above the horizon in the middle of the night. 

An occasional series of theological or bio psychological questions
might work their way to these pages. Most words
will trickle in, like an old-fashioned pinball game.
You'll see a theme of school woven into this publication.

May you find joy
as well as an occasional new thought that
stays with you as they stay with me.

-ms. emily

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