All in the Balance

Fiona Larkin

God love the boy

who sits on the lip

of the highest cliff

in the Burren

as if it were just

any other chair,

both legs dangling

over the Atlantic,

mates on their bellies

singing him back

from the dare.

The air unusually

clear that day, crisply

outlining the edge

of his risk, no ribbon

of mist or low cloud

to blur the stripes

of horizontal blue,

to cushion anything

at all. I loved him then

as if he were mine,

as if I knew that cells

had begun to divide

inside me, as if I felt

the tug of umbilical

cord that would, if

I imagined it hard

enough, haul him

back to my arms.

And when I think

of him now, I’m

the cliff itself—

a reddish ground

which offers a boy

to chance, to choice;

the cliff that believes

itself secure

against the waves,

somehow quite sure

it won’t flake or split.

Such hubris, cliff,

to set him out there

over rising tides

and violent winds!

Cliff as a bed,

a nest, a plinth

which strains to find

ways to hold him up,

to distil joy

out of jeopardy.

FIONA LARKIN is the winner of the National Poetry Competition 2024. Her debut collection, Rope of Sand, was published by Pindrop Press in 2023. The title poem was highly commended in the Forward Prizes. Her pamphlets are Vital Capacity (Broken Sleep Books, 2022) and A Dovetail of Breath (Rack Press, 2020). fionalarkinpoetry.wordpress.com/