Alan Peat
Heaney’s Field Work Stolen
The Branch Libraries, Riverdale Branch, 5540 Mosholu Avenue, Bronx, N.Y. 10471—on a pasted-in yellow pocket. And inside the pocket a white card stamped, “Do not remove from pocket,” further stamped, “ADULT. DATE DUE APR 22 1986.”
So, what made you keep it? Two lines in—My tongue was a filling estuary—was that it? A simile, dropped like a rake among oysters. Or perhaps the later unmolested orchid.
I dwell for a while on the unsolvable; every page thick with fresh reasons for thievery.
bloodshot moon—
pages by torchlight
under the covers
About the Author
Alan Peat is a U.K.-based poet and author. He was runner-up in the 2021 British Haiku Society’s Ken and Norah Jones Haibun Award and in 2022 won a Touchstone Award for Individual Haibun. His book of collaborative ekphrastic haibun with Réka Nytrai, Barking at the Coming Rain (Alba Publishing, 2023), is available by e-mailing alanpeat@icloud.com.