Listen to the poet reading this poem:
Wind battered those who’d stayed on deck, And you pointed to a man who was, in fact, not man but king. He had an air, right enough. When we landed on Tory, all who’d been on board scattered, like jacks thrown in the air, with no signposts to say where or why they’d gone. So we walked along between low stone walls, making desultory conversation until we were hushed by the lashing of the rain, the curlew’s cry, and the sudden appearance of a man riding his bicycle into the wind.
Margaret Hickey worked in London for many years, notably as editor of Departures, a literary travel magazine, and as editor of Country Living magazine UK. She contributed to several newspapers including The Financial Times, The Guardian and The Times. Her first book, Irish Days, a collection of oral histories, was published in 2001 and her most recent book, Ireland’s Green Larder, a history of Ireland through the prism of food and drink, was published in 2018. For many years she was a judge at the Strokestown International Poetry Festival, is a member of two creative writing groups, and is an occasional contributor to Sunday Miscellany.