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PILGRIMAGE

After that it’s all a blur,

just a mass of people rushing past

to get somewhere that seems important,

and I’m the only one going the other way;

twelve years of elbows in the ribs.

Places I’d seen countless times

through the grimy windows of speeding trains

began to seem interesting,

to offer the chance of finding an answer,

or at least a question.

Stepping onto the platform

at a station I’d never heard of,

I felt like an old copper coin

handled and spun for thirty years

by dirty hands, bought and sold ten times a day.

The woman shoved by me and boarded,

slipping a photo and a ticket

into my hand. As the train pulled away,

we watched each other through bleary glass

and I knew I’d never seen her,

though the photo showed us together years before.

The ticket was standard class

to a city I’d never been to.

Leaving that day’s redirected postcard

on the bench, I went to ask about the next train out,

thinking that this time I’d upgrade to first class.

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CATHARSIS

The Lesser Black-Backed Gulls return each spring,

navigating from as far as Africa

by watching the sun and smelling the air,

risking predators, storms and exhaustion

to brighten the north with their laughing calls

and brilliant yellow legs, in a cycle

that has lasted for millions of years;

they cannot do otherwise, it seems.

No tempting illusion of free will

can take the blame for deaths on the way

or chicks carried off buildings by the wind;

for them, it is the work of chance or fate,

to be lamented and suffered without regret

in the true spirit of tragedy.

Next year the beak-masked actors will be back

to present the festival once more.

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NETWORK

The one who arrives is never the same

as the one who left. If this is the end

of a journey I didn’t know I was on,

I will never again lose connection.

The fungus underneath my feet stretches

for miles in every direction; neurons

linking tree to tree, forest to forest,

centuries of memories locked in soil,

erupting now and then in domed antennae

to scatter stored-up moments to the wind.

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Bio:

S.C. Flynn was born in a small town in Australia of Irish origin and now lives in Dublin. His poetry has been published in more than a hundred magazines in more than ten countries. His forthcoming collections are “The Colour of Extinction” (Renard Press, October 2024) and “An Ocean Called Hope” (Downingfield Press, May 2025).

@scyflynn on X and IG

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