Book of the Week – Wasp on the Prayer Flag by Maeve O’Sullivan
The collection spans 2018 to 2021 and is divided into four parts—Seasons, Sequences, Senryu, and Pandemic. On paper the structure looks tidy, but in practice the book unfolds like a journal of awareness. The seasonal poems ground us in shifting weather and light; the sequences allow a theme to ripple across several pages; the senryu tilt toward humor and human awkwardness; and the pandemic poems register the strangeness of those years. Together, they form not so much a framework as a rhythm—an ebb and flow of noticing.
Maeve often tethers the human lightly to the natural world. A bird call, a moonrise, or a spray of blackberries becomes inseparable from memory or emotion. This echoes the Japanese haiku tradition of kigo (seasonal reference) and kireji (cutting word), but her Irish context gives the work its own inflection: damp taxi ranks, Dublin gardens, family dinners. Where her senryu lean into comedy, the effect is a reminder that life is at once fragile and funny, luminous and absurd.
Several poems lingered with me long after reading.
siblings’ reunion six chairs for five
The empty chair lands heavier than any explanation could. Absence speaks louder than presence.
ten years since Dad died
I help an old man
to cross the icy road
A small act layered with memory. It illustrates how grief threads through the most ordinary gestures, echoing long after loss.
my friend tells me more
about his cousin’s passing
wasp on the prayer flag
The title poem feels like the book’s heart. The wasp is fragile, intrusive, buzzing with life; the prayer flag is fleeting, unraveling into air. Together they hold mortality and blessing in a single breath.
What I carried away was not only admiration for her craft, but a reminder: the fabric of a life is made of details we often dismiss. A handful of pine needles. A laugh in the middle of grief. A blackberry plucked along the path. These things matter.
In the end, the wasp hovers where we least expect it, reminding us that impermanence can be both fragile and a blessing. What lingers after closing the book is not sorrow but attentiveness—an invitation to notice, to laugh, to grieve, and above all, to keep looking. Be sure to check out Maeve’s website which has updates on her publications and events.
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You can read the entire book in the THF Digital Library. Please share your favorite poem from the book with us.Do you have a full or chapbook length book published in 2020 or earlier that you would like featured as a Book of the Week? Contact us for details. Haiku featured in the Book of the Week Archive are selected by the THF Digital Librarian Dan Campbell and are used with permission.
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Wasp on the Prayer Flag p11
I sneak a blackberry
with each lap of the path
walking meditation
There is a wonderful cheekiness to this haiku. The verb “sneak” perfectly conveys this mood. In the midst of what the reader can guess is the mindfulness exercise of walking meditation (we can guess also that we are in monastic grounds of some sort) the act of “sneaking” – not stealing, that would be a sin – blackberries. One at a time with each rotation. If one ate all of the blackberries at once that would be stealing, that would be a “sin”, “bad karma”. But one at a time, hmmm. Well, who will notice? The spiritual mood of the exercise of walking meditation is contrasted with the very quiet, almost child-like defiance of the act of sneaking a blackberry. Another interpretation would be that we are not doing walking meditation at all, but that the author is doing exercise laps and sneaking a blackberry with each rotation and that that act itself is the meditation. I really enjoyed the mood of the haiku and its ambiguity.