My dreams are dark as peat. They’re fen and flush, hillock and hollow under orange glow. Pyres of wood scraps and tractor tyres sate the soot-black sky. Cut grass sugars the ring wormed gate. It crumbles to ash in my hands. Another gate is a mound of pheasant feathers. I cannot reach the field. A pile of grass and hedge trimmings arranged in a pit with cow dung cakes, cushion rotting fleeces and ovine afterbirths as they wait a match strike. I feel a throat scrape of sulphur. The mountain has turned grey, smells like meat on the turn. I hear the rumble of yellow machines. Swallows unpick the stitching of Gran’s favourite chair, pulling out horsehair for their nests. The air is charcoal, but no fire burns.

Lorraine Carey’s poetry, haiku and art explore ecocentrism, environmental responsibility and resilience. She uses landscape, ornithology, migration and delicate systems as conduits to explore loss, survival, marginalisation and belonging. Her poems are widely anthologised and feature in Magma, The Stinging Fly, Spelt, Allium, Poetry Ireland Review, Bracken, Loch Raven Review,14 Magazine and The Cormorant among others. Her art has appeared in Skylight 47, Olentangy Review and Barren Magazine. Her first collection From Doll House Windows was published in 2017 by Revival Press. An Agility Award recipient in 2023, she was selected for The Freedom to Write Project 2024. As an artist, she works mainly in oil and watercolour, often experimenting with sea glass, stone and slate. Her palette evokes intricate coastal and rural tapestries, where unspoilt areas thrive and adapt naturally.