Anam Cara

THE OCEAN WIND

Through its mouth at Gleann Corráin, the rising

Ocean can see into Fermoyle valley

That never moves from the absence opened

By the cut of its glacier parent.

With wind the ocean bends each lone blackthorn

To a dark sickle facing the mountain.

The wind would like to breathe its crystal breath

Into the mind of the mountain’s darkness

And riddle the certainty of its stone;

It lashes the cliffs with doubt, its sand lips

Deepen the question each crevice opens

And sow hoards of fern seed in the scailps.*

There is no satisfaction for the wind.

To blow through doors and windows of ruins

Only reminds it how empty it is.

Above Caherbeanna’s ruined village

The wind waits all year for the Garraí Clé

To fill with its tribe of golden corn.

Weary from the ghost geometry of the fog

And heaping itself blindly against walls,

The wind unfolds its heart in yellow dance;

Only now in circles, spirals and waves

Of corn can the wind see itself, swift

As the glance of moonlight on breaking tide.