Sinead

Some years ago, Sinead and her friend Nikola were preparing to go out for the evening. A young man, unknown to either of them,
entered Nikola’s home and proceeded to stab both girls relentlessly. Sinead eventually fell to the floor with a knife wedged in her arm. Nikola fled upstairs, but the man followed and stabbed her in the heart. Sinead heard him leave and managed to drag herself upstairs to cradle her friend in her arms in the last moments of her life.

Still the days lunge at her
Wielding all the ferocity of that stricken day,
But, of Sinead, my mind goes
To the gravity of her hesitations
As she climbed that tortured stair,
And to how she knelt to her friend-
The strident fears still screaming in her brain-
And kneeling, cradled her friend to her death.
From within the terror,
In utter determination,
She raised from out of savagery.

A gift made in gentleness:
A fraught but honourable courtesy
That in rising, rising,
Continues wondrously to ascend,
Quite uncontainable,
Filled entirely with light.