Polly is a Dublin born poet now living and writing on the Dingle Peninsula, Kerry, Ireland. She has been published both nationally and internationally in many anthologies and e-zines under the surname of Munnelly and more recently Richardson. A contributing poet to US-based poetry forum Mad Swirl and Europe’s Live Encounters digi mag with poems featuring in Boston’s Nixes Mate review, Porter Gulch Review Cabrillo college US, Italian based Lotus Eater mag and member of and co-runs Navan creative writers group: The Bulls Arse. She has been heard reading at national and international poetry festivals from 2013 to 2019 including Trim’s (Meath Ireland) first poetry festival in 2019. She also has been heard at open mic nights all over Ireland and via Skype for the second time to Dallas when Mad Swirl went live launching their best of anthology 2018 in 2019. In 2017 she worked with Frisian poet and the now Netherlands Laureate Teasd Brunja in Harrlem in Amsterdam. Her debut collection Winters Breath was launched with Impspired early September 2020 and is available on Amazon. She’s currently working on her second collection.

Arms

_{Dedicated to all of us bare skinned wild swimmers.}

I’ve stretched arms touching infinity poking
holes in smug thick grey, freeing lights hums
to fall on hands in complete submission
to this sandy circle invoking ourselves,
rejoined bare space with wild waves
plunged with primal despite sheer cold bite
of you, penetrations of seas deeper
than these depths before our wade.
I give it all in this moment, completely
open to the giving from your tidal
pull and each new white crest raising
the feminine to greet morning moon.
Arms embrace carrying essens of you
ready for days beat, rotations of sun.

Loss

Breath idles somewhere between
this pause and lights bend in the middle of moons hover
and suns yawn into nights folding onto itself,
that cups stars falling through its lifetime.
I dare not blink
I dare not breathe. I dare not miss. Eyes peel to dilation
Readying to catch those glimpses between idle and somewhere
In dreams I see you sit. I cannot hear. It repeats. I cannot feel
I, you – between idle somewhere, your montage so vividly
plays somehow, I move as metronome motion in time,
this time. No time. I see you sit echoes of words you wove follow,
somewhere between moons hover and suns yawn
into nights folding I hear. Love you.

Dingle Wilds 48 – Wander

Wading through these tides I count
revealing stars as night sings itself here, one by one
little pin pricks dot sheer blackness above alive,
I imagine Zeus and Poseidon pricking holes as they quarrel
above Sleeping giants rugged outline debating
their oddities leaving traces from random pokes as constellations
to our mere conversations with self and low white horses coming to shores,
Its brother Pegasus strikes across skies so fast it seems light years away
its bluish hue arcing to touch sea- surface falls on horizon

perhaps blindly disturbing him in sleep, their primal battle
drowning out all erosions so view of his still self to shore
plays illusion to eyes seeking depending
on where feet explore in wandering.
I am tuning into focus
like camera lens I point at memories yet to be formed,
twinkling clusters upon clusters gather, little jewels
dressing vastness above. Here we are moon I,
elating in these walks when only breath skims across laps
with echoes of curlew and maybe owl is heard,
so many tides, so many shores wandered with weights of
all merry dances bending this body as lunar beam
at times distorted
at times fragmentations of light almost smothered by thicken cloud
at times great big bold rainbows
land upon these shores west of west east that was
slow scanning pupils dilated
and waves gurgle through this bare skin in
waiting wading, counting.

_{*Sleeping Giant, an un- inhabited Island which looks like a giant man sleeping part of The
Great Blasket Islands Dingle Peninsula along the Wild Atlantic way costal drive , Kerry on
the west coast of Ireland.}