By Steve Myers
Featured Art: “Imitating Tom Balbo’s Pulp Paintings on Denim” By Nicholas Skaldetvind

The skyblue nest eggs of a robin
lie touching each other in her early
photo hanging on our kitchen wall
as do the cats in another
sunning on a cottage threshold
like that she has now crossed over
into dementia even as the door
she confesses has shut behind her
on the practice of her lifelong art
inching toward my wife as if she
were the friend who need understand
speaking as one who could not recall
the once familiar drive over the word
that begins with W the trip to Ireland
that lingers only in the photos she desires
wants more than anything to give us
one of a light gap among deadfall trees
she long ago labeled Woodland Serenity
one of ponies pulling carriages on Aran
clopping at opposite edges of the frame
we praising and passing hand to hand
till the last shot stops us
a single sheep windowless turf shed
empty rockstrewn Connemara headland.

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Steve Myers has published the collection, Memory’s Dog, a monograph on the poetry of W.B. Yeats, articles on Irish poetry and prose, and three poetry chapbooks. A Pushcart Prize winner, his poems appear in Callaloo, Notre Dame Review, The Southern Review, Tar River Poetry, and Valley Voices. He heads the poetry track for the MFA in Creative Writing at DeSales University.