Refuge Poem by Seamus O' Brian

I hide behind the slender stalks
of a certain scripted font;
yet, I shouldn't say certain-
because any font will do,
it's more the shadows cast
by the forms, the imagery
perhaps razored and incisive
like the battleship gray edge
of concertina wire drawing a
thin line of blood from
an inmate's flesh, as he leans
toward the smell of freedom wafting
in across the yard,
or perhaps hazy and ambiguous
like the pernicious muttering,
the judicious murmuring
intermittently
escaping from the bodies
huddled at the plaintiff's table,
puncturing the obligatory
marbled quiet of the oaken pews
as your sweaty fingers nervously
massage a thin hope
that on this day
justice will not be wrought.
Well, not you, because
you don't find yourself
peering out from behind
the perilously thin concealment
of these words
like I do.