Love Song for Beara — 3rd draft

Love Song for Beara

Here in this place, where the Skelligs sit off shore,

cows dance, ducks speak, faeries scuttle, the dog speaks,

and the Ring of Kerry rises, but never bows down.

*****

Paths swivel and surprise,

birds natter and gather,

ivy tangles trees, rooting itself in moss.

*****

Sky moves, landscape shifts,

transforms itself with beams of sun–

paints green gold, warms & brightens day,

sweeps away rain.

*****

Slow boat putters out of Coulagh Bay,

trails silver in its wake, disappears behind the headlands,

finds its way home now that the sky has begun to lift.

*****

Pluck and taste ripe blackberries, bushes bountiful at edges of lanes,

next to fields owned by coal black cows and tiny horses made by God.

Traipse through bog near strand and wonder if

you will be found, the next day, after having fallen in.

*****

Walk out on strand, feel sand shift under feet, hear water lapping,

slipping inwards with tidal pull.  Watch dogs race against wind.

Kneel down, gather water in cupped hands, in gratitude, taste salt of sea.

Try to find your way home, a new way, but discover a single cow

standing solid, blocking, chewing cud, where sea meets land,

where seaweed ribbons meet marsh grasses.

*****

Church bells at noon and six, peal out to mark divisions of day.

Houses painted the colour of crayons, never to be erased.

Eight miles to Kilcatherine, over loping hills and round curled lanes,

a two hour walk from there to here, from ancient bone-yard

to seaside pub with picture window, pints, and poets.

*****

And it was there, in Eyeries, on Beara,

that I found myself:

out of darkness, into light;

and I thought of love, and lost love,

and life, and my lost ones.

*****

Memory bound, this place, etched on heart.