Month: September 2023

On the bluff
in cairn castles
bog dragons laugh
in smoking stacks

White water cracks with
the whips of the dorsel morse of dolphins
etching s.o.s. into the crest of sky

There the
sea cave
is a
doorway
to the place
of the ones who are
formorian
electric limbed
triple
jointed
arms and legs
eyes of black apple seeds
and hollow faced.

Atop their
world those who
remember
are one creature
mending the fragile.
We protstrate
as Mná Ghlúine
We brace
for the breached birth
of earth into sky.

Knowing
never was there going to be
a first time.

Encircled by our keepers
Lios-ting and
woven in
mistletoe.
With angels standing
on our elbows
and at our fingertips
our eyes bloom like anenomes
and
we too are freckled in
lichen.

I sit
with Seanmháthair
dilligent and brisk
wisen and sanguine.
A wicker basket woman
swung with shawls
of dilisk and carraigín.

She weaves my hair into a wick
Whisper’s;
Selky
Selky
Selky
I am oilfurred, slick and seal tallowed,
slipping between the sky and sea.

With a lick
I am torched
a beacon…
(like you told me
that time.)

My crown is ate by fire
blessed by the fingertips
of those shining folk
who broke the sky.

Then the lull and hum and drone
you’ve known
ends.
And the world wakes you up
and says

‘The Ashes of Her Body Will Be Your Deathbed,
…the ashes of her body will be your deathbed…

And you will tell the men
And they will tremble
and begin to cry.
And their fathers will don their felted woollen hats.
Close their eyes
and tell their sons
as they’ve been told and tell a thousand times;

‘Ne’er mind the burning woman son…
she is no beacon,
nor heaven’s sign.
Only some phenomenon
the wise men call St. Elmo’s Fire.’