“Maria Isakova Bennett’s poems are otherworldly. They take you into a dream-space that is rich with emotion – into landscapes that are so close you can taste them. But there is always an agreeable tease – nothing is settled, everything unravels, there is always more to the story. “Under water,” she writes, “everything is clear” – these poems, so in love with art and landscape, are all about tempting you to travel further – and to be happy as you travel.”

“These are poems seduced by a longing for wildness, coastal roads, rough seas; the freedom and self-expansion found in love. Opening out to the west wind, Maria Isakova Bennett guides us through the sensuous into the mysteries of passion.”

Poetry

Adrift

It’s November and half way through the Our Father
when Richie lifts his head and slurs ‘Halloween

be thy name.’ We serve plates of food –
little rescue rafts on an uncertain sea.

Even the homeless centre reminds me of you:
the way you talked to the man on the street in Dublin,

bought him a meal in The Bleeding Horse and told him
you’d just lost God. I didn’t know who was helping who.

Richie shovels bolognese, his head hits the table.
Coaxed into standing, he slides

backwards and forwards in unlaced shoes,
‘Come on lad! Come on mate!’

A bruise for a face. He falls and rises, slips
and staggers away between unsteady men.

The chairs are wiped, the floor is brushed,
we wash our hands, and the room steadies.

I remember O’Shea on the steps of The Merrion Hotel –
clean-shaven, his hand out for money, his soft voice.

I gave him five euros just to listen to his story
and wondered if he knew you:

the Good Samaritan from Fermanagh
clutching National Geographic shouting

‘There is nothing. Only this.’

The Paper Tree

I thrash from a sea bed to the surface, breathe,
backstroke through dreams. Last night –
Oxford. Jericho, cafes lit

in the afternoon. A panini, an Americano,
and I’m in every cafe where I talked with him
from here to Rosapenna.

The years flicker – notebook pages turn –
the story sleeps. I dig into my bag
for scissors, shred and quill paper. A tree rises

from the pages’ heart: its branches frayed.
The table is scattered with paper remnants –
the book won’t close:

I hug it to me, leave
and wander through crisp air. The tree
in my arms as my boots echo

I am with him again –
late at night in a cellar bar,
drinking till we fall.

First published in Prole