My Life - One Hundred Years Later

by Paddy Donoghue

My life tastes like stale bread
left too long.

My life looks like a grey day
laden with cloud.

My life smells like a sunken bog
left to stagnate.

My life feels like a death cry
pulled from a banshee.

My life is most comfortable
in the silence of nature –
one hundred years later.

Reproduced with kind permission of the author. This poem was composed in a Poetry as Commemoration workshop held at Sligo County Library in October 2023.  The workshop was led by writer Terry McDonagh.