Three Monkeys Online

A Curious, Alternative Magazine

Raindrop – a poem

By Michael J. Whelan

RAINDROP

I hold on by day, but in the night

when lonely shepherds tend their flocks

bending low from arching lights

under an iron sky, the blackness

criss-crossed with prayers,

laced with phosphorous tracer

and laden with soldiers metal, I listen

to mosquitoes choosing their moment.

The sirens begin to wail but I am dead

until a single raindrop on my forehead

washes over me, your hand on my skin

a teardrop.

Michael J. Whlean served as a peacekeeper with the Irish Army in South Lebanon and Kosovo. He was 2nd Place Winner of the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award in 2011 and selected for the Poetry Ireland Introductions Series in 2012. His poems and short stories have been published in Cyphers, Crannog and The Moth. (www.michaeljwhelan.wordpress.com)