Sydney Lea

At Cliffs' Edge

Footsore from boots I’d just bought in Lahinch,

I carried a ten-month-old son on my back,

his mother and siblings exploring the town.

The cliffs of Moher, where I heard the great riot

of surf far, far below me on stone.

I sat on the grass to duck the wind

and seem to have dozed. I dreamed great things

for myself, ones to match the epical view,

but a banshee arrived in her grey and green gown

to keen. I listened. What else would I do?

Though I’ve never been superstitious, her song

unnerved me. Was someone I loved in the grip

of death? Was that why the she-spirit moaned?

Within seconds, however, I came to suspect

the fine spring day was mocking my gloom

and even more fiercely my vanities:

to be famous, as if fame could come to a poet,

someday to play the steel guitar,

and more. I saw a wild pumping of wings

as a solitary gull took to air

to be hopelessly stalled in place by the blow.

I relapsed. I likened the bird’s state to mine

until Tina Turner sang through some window,

and the child’s warm hand touched the back of my neck.

Tina said, We Don’t Need Another Hero.   

A former Pulitzer finalist in poetry, Sydney Lea served as founding editor of New England Review and was Vermont’s Poet Laureate from 2011 to 2015.  In 2021, he was presented with his home state’s highest distinction of its kind, The Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts. He has published twenty-four books: two novels, six volumes of personal and three of critical essays, and sixteen poetry collections, most recently What Shines (Four Way Books, NYC, 2023). His latest book of personal essays, Such Dancing as We Can, is now available from The Humble Essayist Press, and his second novel, Now Look, has just been published by Downeast Books.