{"id":285155,"date":"2026-02-07T05:13:06","date_gmt":"2026-02-07T05:13:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/285155\/"},"modified":"2026-02-07T05:13:06","modified_gmt":"2026-02-07T05:13:06","slug":"the-sixty-second-poem-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/285155\/","title":{"rendered":"The Sixty Second Poem \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The sky\u2019s hung soft with leaves,<br \/>\nthe generous shelter of plane trees.<br \/>\nFirst Wednesday of the month,<br \/>\ntwelve noon, and all over France<br \/>\nair raid sirens raise their chilling<br \/>\nwail, hold for sixty seconds, pick<br \/>\nat the scab of memory. I\u2019m in a<br \/>\nplayground in central Montpellier,<br \/>\na city steeped in the cloy of jasmine,<br \/>\ntumbles of honeysuckle, the clap<br \/>\nof detonating pigeons. Meet my<br \/>\ngrandson, three-and-a-half, just<br \/>\nlearned to ride a bike, no stabilisers.<br \/>\nHappy out. He throws the bike down,<br \/>\nruns to the swings. I look up, the sky\u2019s<br \/>\nstill hiding behind a canopy of green,<br \/>\nthe risen shriek holds its note until,<br \/>\ndiminuendo, the monthly minute\u2019s<br \/>\ndone. Silence takes its space back.<br \/>\nNo one has noticed. No one is hurt.<\/p>\n<p>Geraldine Mitchell\u2019s fifth collection, Naming Love, was published by Arlen Press in 2024. She divides her time between Mayo and southern France. geraldinemitchell.net<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The sky\u2019s hung soft with leaves, the generous shelter of plane trees. First Wednesday of the month, twelve&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":285156,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[61,60,49207,979,80],"class_list":["post-285155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-poems-of-the-week","tag-poetry","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=285155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285155\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/285156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}