Heart space,
stopping, filling,
upwards towards
and I listen,
open to the planetary pull,
lift my eyes and
break the chains binding,
set the clock hands
spinning
towards evening’s open house,
cross my fingers, and
finish this.
love
Inscribed
View from Gortnagan Beg across to the McGillycuddy Reeks, Kerry
Beithe, luis, nuin,
so I begin,
lay out the branches on the ground
to build my ancestral home.
Fínín,
he who walks alone
in a confusion of colours
from Gortnagan to Ellis Island
and beyond to Botany Bay,
where his bones and his aching heart lies,
lain out beneath the flight path
of his descendants.
Our shared bloodline, our Irish heart,
residing, Fínín and I
in a foreign landscape,
ankle-deep in the ocean’s flow,
the caress of salt water
on feet bruised with walking
the stony road, hardly recognizable
as a pathway to the present,
for there are no verge-side shrines, or candles here,
or gifts to the gods,
For him, only a medal, a commendation
to stretch out beside
and embrace the loam, while I
breathe in the fragments of us all,
and give us voice.
Luile Beith 