Kate Ennals is a prize-winning poet and writer and has published poems and short stories in a range of literary and on-line journals (Crannog, Skylight 47, Honest Ulsterman, The Moth, Anomaly, The International Lakeview Journal, Boyne Berries, North West Words, The Blue Nib, Dodging the Rain, The Ogham Stone, plus).In 2017, she won the Westport Arts Festival Poetry Competition. Her first collection of poetry At The Edge was published in 2015. Her second collection, Threads, was published in April 2018. She has lived in Ireland for 25 years and currently runs poetry and writing workshops in County Cavan. Kateruns At The Edge, Cavan, a literary reading evening, funded by the Cavan Arts Office. Before doing an MA in Writing at NUI Galway in 2012, Kate worked in UK local government and the Irish community sector for thirty years, supporting local groups to engage in local projects and initiatives. Her blog can be found at kateennals.com

The Westbury Horse

The white horse commands the Salisbury plain
Its eye asserts the roll of the lie
We go back long ways, Westbury Horse and I
Galloping our youth over chalk and lime

The Number 29 Bus

Today, it trundles still through the streets of London.
From Pimlico to Tottenham, by way of Seven Sisters.
A red, double-decker, covered, glazed stairwell
wrap-over rear saloon window
automatic doors, brushed corduroy seats.
I see it now in Finsbury Park
Passing under the dark station bridge
where the pigeons and homeless roost and shit.
 
A far cry from the model painted
In 1934 by war artist, Eric Ravilious
when he travelled to Eastbourne and
discovered a derelict bus sitting alone.
 
His no. 29 angles memory and light.
It’s open stairwell curves like a ferry
with wooden seats.
It rests faded bones on four round beer barrels.
 
Parked next to a tumbled down shed
it has a momentum that, in conjunction
with my imagination
sees me sitting up top, in the front seat,
paper ticket in hand
rolled out by the bus conductor’s
clacking machine.
A young girl, enthusiastic
on her way to a ballroom of romance.

A Love Letter

I write this letter in my garden
in the silvery light of the stars
where my yellow evening primrose
is my sentinel in the dark;
 
A lush Dublin Rose has my back
with her lash and whip of red tongues
a white bowl of Alyssum at my feet
washes the night air in waves.
 
Dear John
 
I post it behind the bins.

A Chat in The Pool

i
 
I sink into dappled sunlight
A blue chamber of mosaics
Submerged in white noise
Into silence, streaked with height
depth dappled with shadows of light
 
             ii
 
I cut a swath, face submerged
My tips trace my fleshy shores
shoulder glides watery contours
I turn to breathe oxygen of earth
Face down, I blow bubbles of breath
 
                                iii
 
After lengths, relaxing in froth
a slip of a child floats along
chats midst bubbles and burps
Her words scatter a watery fray
Her story lines are cast adrift
With an airy gesture of fingers
Her voice rising above the din
Of shoots and jets echoing
           
iv
 
She submerges suddenly
Down into foamy pool
To reappear on a tip of a whale’s blow
She’s up and away
Gone in a flash
A flowing, flipping fish girl.