The Lonely Crowd will feature new work by a different poet each month throughout 2026. For May, we are delighted to publish three new works by Tim MacGabhann. The first of these, ‘A Winter Dedication’, is published today with two more poems to follow throughout the month. 

A Winter Dedication

(for Sean and Lisa)

That 3am turn for the worst
has me crediting the old myth
of how fog rose from the sky-god’s
tears so he could play pretend
that his solitude was eternal.

How do I dream myself back to sleep?
Rehash a moody Norse fable, maybe,
mutter about how ink and pigments
were rendered from seawater
brimming on obliterated moraines.

Or else just picture your and Lisa’s sofa –                                                                                                      bottlecaps flipped off, kettle cooling.

The talk sinks deliciously towards truth,
an olive fork sunk through rich pain
with a quick little twist that discloses
a fold of trapped gleam, then the roughcast
unbudgeable nub no gag or riff can soften gone,
and send us packing to settle bed and real bed
to contemplate what can’t be altered.

Fluency’s the only soothe left, and it nothing
only a sudsy pother. So I’ll tell it straight:
wish you were here, or wish I was there
where rampant seawind flecks the window,
scraubs branches over the slates,
and combs the waves again and again
till their shaggy flux is sleeked the shineless
luxe sable of Brother Novak’s pelt.

Tim MacGabhann is the author of the novels Call Him Mine and How to Be Nowhere, the memoir The Black Pool, the short story collection Saints, and the poetry collection Found in a Context of Destruction.

Author photo by Sido Lansari.

Main photo by John Lavin.