Poetry by Eileen Cleary

              ​  Simon CC



DEAR GRIEF-LAKE, 

We failed to notice you circling
our gates in the denning season.

You breached the park, Dear Predator,
where we latched our children between 
crisp greens and wooly sky,

scraped  the soil, 
showered your scent
across the play-yard,

Dear Raptor. Dear Innocence Eater, 
Slash Monger, Star Stealer,

you approached in the way we
tried to seal you out, telltale
blue smoke of your breath

vanishing.  How happy we were, blind
and unaware of you crouched there.





MISSING

Name: the song before “Time for supper.” Or “Wait till your father.”

From:  Mrs. Walsh’s second grade.  The orchard where Daisy fetches sticks.

Date: every day since. 

Age:  that changes.  We like to think that his bones lengthen, muscles strengthen and birthdays make him older every year.

Eyes:  shade of fawn or baby bear, a walking stick, or a baseball mitt.

Hair: shag, combed on tiptoes in front of the mirror.

Scars: not that we know.

Complexion: we used to think, fair.          And freckled.

Clothing: never found. ​




Eileen Cleary is the author of 'Child ward of the Commonwealth' (Main Street Rag Press, 2019), which received an honorable mention for the Sheila Margaret Motton Book Prize and ' 2 a.m. with Keats' (Nixes Mate, 2021). In addition, she co-edited the anthology ' Voices Amidst the Virus', the featured text at the 2021 Michigan State University Filmetry Festival.