Irish Otters

An Otter

Christmas day, 4 O'clock,
Stumps of cloud, like yellowing tower blocks,
Lean over
The failing glimmer of Christmas lights
And the quays, utterly empty,

Except

For one dark otter, slick with river slime,

A shape

Made of dark Lee water,
Of thick fluid,
Of rippling muscle,

Swaggering, like any pedestrian,
Up the steps from the riverbed,
Across the street,
Past dim shop displays,shuttered windows,

Toward an empty car askew on the footpath,
Its engine idling, its front door open,
Its headlights ploughing the gloom,

And a girl, its driver,
Standing alone on the pavement,

Innocent, beautiful.
She leans over the otter,
Her long hair hanging down
As a second slinks up from the riverbed,
Like a hand sliding slowly
From a hip to a breast.

-Billy Ramsell

Ramsell writes, “I try to avoid the following: my family, my childhood, a certain type of rural idyll, a certain way of writing about history, poems that explicitly concern themselves with Ireland and Irishness, local characters.” Yet although he may stay away from traditional Irish poetic themes, there is a sense of Irishness in his work. It is a more modernized, urbanized Ireland. A person can enjoy his poetry, and its Irishness, without feeling sentimental and inauthentic.