Sharon Flynn is a member of Ballymoney Writers’ Group and grew up in the seaside town of Portstewart; long walks along the North Antrim Coast are one of her favourite sources of inspiration. Her poems have appeared in several anthologies, issues of The Stinging Fly, Skylight 47 and The Cannon’s Mouth and in The Blue Nib Chapbook 4. She has been runner up the competition for the Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing and is a graduate of the MA course at the Heaney Centre at Queen’s University.  Sharon tries to follow Mary Oliver’s advice to look ‘as though with your arms wide open’ and hopes at least some of her work will be enjoyed by her grandchildren in years to come.

Sea Anemone

Long ago, when we were more,

we sifted shells for mermaids tears

in verdigris and celadon. 



We hoarded this enchanted glass, 

in jars on winter windowsills 

where lead white glittered in the light,



frosted by the scouring sea, 

where glints of umber, cobalt blue 

shone and sang their rasping song, 



as sibilant as long-shore swash,

a whispered song of ships and stars, 

of treasure maps and siren calls. 







I still search for crystal shards,

though it hurts my knees to crouch like this 

and I must watch my steps on stones.



Lost voices rustle in my fists, 

my pockets sigh for summers gone.

I drop them deep in silent pools,



or toss them back along the shore

to sink beneath the bladderwrack. 



There is no-one to go home to now.

My heart hurts when it unfurls.

Anemones are safer curled.