Looking out west beyond the Shannon,
a sudden elemental shift
blooms into softer, loosened light,
floats over splayed horizon
canters toward mountain and sea
in air charged differently.
The open windowed,
raw ocean freshness
tingles on face and scalp.
Fields undulate and ramble,
endless lines of dry wall skirt and skim
– stone stitched tapestries
threading boundary and ditch.
Haw and whitethorn lean wind-sighed
and bow backed, an odd curiosity of oak soars,
while bramble and scrub cluster
into knotted impenetrables,
The ground’s stubborn rebuttal
of harrow and seed scatter,
the back break of ditch-hoke and stone-heft,
ghosts in grey ruin of castle and church
the windowless broken cottages
and their slow crumbled release
of shape and form back into clay and air.
It is here, freed from the noise and clutter
of the city’s swelling entropies
its hemmed in, concreted dissonance
we see things more clearly
the Sun’s arced walk across the sky
a lemon Moon’s charcoaled amble,
the primrosed pre-dawn glow
of Venus heralding re-birth.
Copyright © John Kavanagh 2013
