The Price
By Anthony Wade
Out from the indifferent city,
beyond even the nightly radiance
of its projecting pollution,
watching wave-white
on the shimmering tide,
my slow scarring steps softer
than the sibilant breath
of the eternal timekeeper
waiting its turn to wash
the bright unlighted strand
stretching beneath the lonely clock
of an ashy moon hanging low,
came in the aloneness a first faint stir,
a slight lessening in the hard grip
of sorrowing grief so long shackling me
but behind that hesitant hiss of release
would rise the souring rust of remorse
for though I had loved you
I had failed you, too.
Anthony Wade, London-born, raised by a deserted migrant Irish mother; knew poverty and prejudice. Thankfully, education, available and firmly grasped, brought university and a profession. Worked long in The Netherlands before a medical disability eventually brought him Home to his Mother’s county of Cork close to where he had spent childhood summers. He joined the local writers’ group in 2016, published his first poem in 2018, now a Forward Prize nominee with poetry published in print in Ireland, across Britain, India, Spain, the USA, and Canada, and more widely online. He can’t stop writing poetry.