Ireland Poems
Four free poems from my first adventure abroad
In July, I hitchhiked around Ireland for 11 days. I spent most of my time on the northwest coast, with a few days in Dublin at the beginning and end. “Great South Wall” is a notebook poem from the Great South Wall that sticks way out into Dublin Bay. “sliabh mór” is a phone note poem from my first joyous day romping around in nature on Achill Island along the side of Sliabh Mór, the “big mountain,” where sheep and I roamed free, and the sky didn’t get dark til 11. You can tell by the Joycean portmanteaus and wordplay in the second poem that I started reading Ulysses. The poems got progressively stronger after I left the uncertainty of Dublin to explore off the beaten path, talk to real Irish people, and truly absorb the language and the land.
“Cliffs of Croaghaun” is a notebook poem written atop the highest seacliffs in Ireland (and the 3rd highest in all of Europe). I’m sure I’ll see the famous Cliffs of Moher someday, but I’m glad that the magic of hitchhiking brought me to the less-popular Cliffs of Croaghaun instead— as you can see in the pictures, I had them all to myself. Well, myself and the sheep. “Sin Free” is a phone note poem I wrote halfway up Croagh Patrick, the holiest mountain in Ireland, where Saint Patrick fasted for 40 days. When I reached the summit, I wrote “truly.”
Great South Wall
The dawn cracks open the clouds
to ferry a new-fangled gray
glowing and vulnerable
thru ol' Dublin Bay, half-protected
from the open mouth of Europe
shining its half-penny teeth
on a people who happen
to be happy.
sliabh mór the barest beatbreaths of sheeppaths everslivver so slightly through meadowdown greens allsteppable for footsright to roam uncertain as the fogfalling and never finally arriving in the burneye mist of this endless sunset
Cliffs of Croaghan The past is a delicious burden, this unchosen love I carry wherever I go, no matter how far, even here at the western cliff-edge of Ireland, where the wind insists upon the sea, wants to carry me clean west to turn death free, if only I'd allow myself one more step over the ledge of this packed peat, this body that would keep you warm if you burned it.
Sin Free
The long beat trail up the holy mountain
is not the only way:
sin in a new direction,
a faded old path retaken by time
greengrinning to nil til all one grass, free
in a field beyond good and evil, grandly
agnostic of treadfeet,
forgiving flowers:
everyone’s path to god must be little
different.
