Empty-Handed

 

Empty-Handed

 

Lying with our last hours

we may wish to have loved more,

to have loved more, more, or

to have loved fewer, better

but which of us would wish

to have loved less, for is

a life lived without love

not a life unspent?

 

And for those of us who will

die alone we will scream

against the abandonment,

of being taken with no hand

to hold as we are forced

to let go, even if no-one

could hear our scream

through the Covid choking.

 

Anthony Wade

 

Anthony Wade is a graduate lawyer with a Master’s Degree, an Irish national educated in England who also worked in The Netherlands. His work has appeared or is appearings in Ariel Chart, Boyne Berries, Causeway, Dreich, Scrittura Magazine, MonthsToYears, Lakeview Literary Magazine, Setu Bilingual, Strands Lit Sphere, Tiny Seed and The Dawntreader. He received a Highly Commended in the Francis Ledwidge Poetry Award 2018.  An active member of the Midleton Writers’ Group he now lives by the sea in East Cork.