SÉAMUS DUGGAN – Portarlington, Laois, IRE

Luddite

The boy signed off

all services

dropped his phone into the river

and headed into the

mountains

where forest reigns.

Dressed in clothes of sun and soil,

his compass was the moss on the trees

and the taste of the wind

on his tongue.

He would talk no more,

it blunted the senses.

He would walk until the last dust

of civilisation

had fallen from his skin.

His destination was

to unwind the idea of destinations.

His guide a crumpled scrap of paper

on which he had scrawled

this poem.

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Séamus Duggan says: My attempts at songwriting and poetry go back decades. Someday I aim to select a bunch of poems and self-publish a collection, to sit alongside my self-released albums. If you want to take future publication from my hands, feel free to contact me. The poem I’ve selected is Luddite, which came almost instantaneously after a mountain walk.

You can see and hear more from Séamus Duggan here.