Poem of the Week: “Seasons of the Lemon House” by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin

In her poem “Seasons of the Lemon House,” Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin explores the deep connection between the natural world, human experience, and language. The ebb and flow of light and darkness, warmth and frost, mirror the rhythms that shape our lives. With a keen eye for the interplay of interior, natural, and spiritual landscapes, Ní Chuilleanáin reveals the quiet structures that bind them together in her newest book, The Map of the World.

– Virginia Noone, WFU Press Intern

Seasons of the Lemon House

The shadows in the lemon house hinted
a place of refuge, their semitones of light
carefully inclining along the downward curve,
pausing on a twilit verge. The high, dim glazed
frames gently allowing the light inside.

In the Shrovetide frost they kept their counsel.
Now on the edge where climates shift
spilling across the map, the lemon trees are safe,
herding together, brushing twigs and leaves,
the fruits floating under the ruffled skirts

shining yellow as ever. The heavy pots of clay
readied for the move outside are not yet stirring
at their slow procession. Their wheels complaining.

I thought of the nets of language, how
they float past each other: never engaging,
they lie side by side, a shallow tidal zone between.
Codes of work and home: one basks
and the other shivers—light, then dark.

The order is not spoken yet, the knife still
in the sailor’s pocket. Then cut it—
The knitted flesh
tight inside, segmented like the compass rose.

By July we will have forgotten the word for frost.

– Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, from The Map of the World (2025)