HCE received a lot of high-quality submissions for The Green Issue – sadly, too many to fit inside the magazine! So we offered some writers and artists who’d sent in work the chance to be published here on the website. Keep an eye on our social media for more great work like this, now that The Green Issue print magazine has been released! (For more information or to purchase your copy, visit our shop.)
Marie Studer
Test-tube Daffodils
(To the memory of William Wordsworth and the host of Golden Daffodils)
In the dream there were no more daffodils
in gardens, allotments or fields
instead, a floating glass sarcophagus
of earth’s near extinct blooms
housed – in a climate controlled natural museum.
Flickering light of haloed memories
the succulence of shimmering silky cups
spheres of so yellow petals
sword green leaves
sacs of seed – lost in the dark abyss of ancestries.
Golden Daffodils interred in test-tubes
a glimpse of earth’s lost bounty
and an idea, of what the poet might have felt
when the hosts danced under skylight
and made a lasting mindscape of
go to golden beauty.
I woke to the chorus of birdsong
and, the tick-tock, tick-tock of the Doomsday Clock.
Marie Studer lives by the River Shannon in Castleconnell, Co. Limerick, Ireland. She is a graduate of the University of Limerick and works in the voluntary healthcare sector. She has, in the last two years attended creative writing classes and returned to writing poetry. Marie was a winner in the poetry category of the Bangor Literary Journal Halloween Ekphrastic Challenge 2019 and was shortlisted in the North West Words Aurivo Poetry Competition 2020. She has also been published in local anthologies.