The Gold of Loss

An old Irish voice tells me,

Sing the story.

To Open w i d e

To listen for the birds,

To dance along all of the edges and centres within the fields -

that rain should never stop you,

A mere hand extending itself for your taking.

To wander down every river in your imagination

To stretch your gaze along the deep bold horizon,

The line, steady. Holding all of the chaos, the beauty.

The unrelenting heartbreak.

Life disappeared,

Life, disappears

My eyes glazing over at the ships ahead.

To get lost, but to by god, put your wellies on when you do it

In whole entire universes made of haystacks

into fields of pollen where your eyes swell to the size of planets

Where the only thing to do is put magnum ice creams on them,

as you lick the stingy glow of mischief off your cheeks

Let that voice tell you that you are a true custodian of the tales.

To let them cradle you next to warm fires knitting

Poking your eyes and fingers through all the holes of dropped stitches

To let your aunties teach you everything there is to know about getting things done.

How to widen your presence

Not to shrink it.

To stuff your face full of

Steaming scones,

Brown soda bread

Stains of buttermilk on your knees

To sit at foxes,

The glow of older irish men slumped-

dimly lit candles on the dark corners of the bar,

To feel what’s buried, disused and forgotten.

Their hands rough with callouses from the land

Callouses that tell stories centuries old

Of miserable beauty and beautiful misery

The big search

The light search

The deep search

To let a Teddy Murphy sermonise every cm of his land in Gaelic,

How it has changed him

How it can change everyone

To take a moment for him to linger and lean against the rock he wants to be buried under

The wild and serenading Kerry coastline reflecting in his eyes

ancient lineage oxygenating blood and life into his veins.

To let the liffey, the shannon, and all the other mother lochs open to your fears,

Tears,

Transforming them into blood

The cascading fertile void - Blag hurt ah -

The beating heart in your womb.

To see my father meeting the threshold of the ocean,

the remains of his mother

Fading into the ink of the telegram crumpled in his hands.

That old Irish voice tells me,

I help hold apart of it with you

Wrapping it all up in an aran island sweater

For the roaring west coast to ravage and open

what has been closed and crusted within you

For the purple limestone to magnificently shelter every shade and

every shadow.

To welcome in all love lost.

To let your

Clay

Being breathe open.

To pray

To wander the churches and the bog feeling the spirits, the ancestors

Ancient Roots twisting deep and binding like the pieces of reed

moulded into baskets,

st brigidines crosses

To pray, again

To the fairies and folklore and trust all of the superstitions

that your grandfather spout with his cane

The tin whistle call of the intergenerational return.

That every day you’re above ground is a good day

To tell

Many

Many

Many

Stories

With paint brushes, typewriters, the Barron

and with your naked body intertwined in love.

And to make sure it envelops the gold of tragedy, of loss,

“How many times have the waves crashed...

Seen all of this over, millions of times before.”

To feel the soothing wisdom of ancient stones,

High up on the cliffs and buried under the streets,

The way the earth dances with darkness

Each day of the year

And to remember, beauty

Is deep in the hole of doubt.

Living in the bones

In the currach of the heart

Ar scáth a chéile a mhaireann na daoine

That old Irish voice tells me.

that it is in the shelter and the shadows of the people.

That we live.