My Hope

by Wiktoria Chojnacka

My hope tastes like a Sunday roast 

resting on the table

My whole family gathered round

for fun, chat, and banter.

My hope smells like a flower garden

swaying to the music of nature. 

My hope feels like a car on a racetrack

racing from the pit.

My hope sounds like a graceful waterfall

flowing into the distant stream.

My hope is freedom.

one hundred years from the war. 

Written by Wiktoria Chojnacka, as part of Poetry as Commemoration workshops led by Terry McDonagh in Castlerea Community School, Roscommon, in  November 2022. Transition Year students were invited to write a poem in response to Terry McDonagh’s poem ‘My Freedom One Hundred Years Later’, written in commemoration of the War of Independence.