Sea of Clouds
 
 
 
A bank of mist rolls down the mountain
like a breath of God in the morning.
White and smoky cloud conjugate.
The ghost of the waxing moon yields.
On the left hand corner of the horizon
a prism of colour shivers through wet sunlight.
My wish is not for gold – just a
thank you, thank you, thank you -
rolling out as surely as the ocean tide.
 

This Week in Corrogue …

 
One of the benefits of this unseasonably cold weather this March has been the amazingly clear night sky. Without light pollution out here in Corrogue each night when I take the dogs out last thing we pause and have a good look at the moon and I try to pick out the constellations and some planets. Venus is easily the brightest, but Saturn twinkles fairly brightly too at the moment.
 
Earlier this year I was with a few Cub Scouts who went out sky watching with me. Saoirse, (pronounced Sir-sha, meaning freedom in Irish) a very perceptive ten-year old, commented on how ancient those stars were and if we were there (up in the stars) we wouldn’t even be born yet. By the time we see the light twinkling it is in the star’s past.  The star may even have died out by the time we see it in our now.  And, she further reasoned, up there in the stars because of the time difference people who have died are still alive. . Her father died when she was six years old.  But when she looks up into the night sky and looks at the stars he is still alive and well.
 
Some academic has said that our human intellect is at its sharpest when we are ten years old. I was in awe of this fine young woman in the making.
 
© 2006 Bee Smith
 

An exuberance of yellow-

coconut scented, gaudy gorse

         teasing us with the tropics

amidst westerly blasts and downpour

 
celandine creeping commando style

         from the verge to

create a carpet of a meadow

 
the daffy-down-dillies are turning heads

 ancient ladies go giddy

in the blood (and glad of it, too) 

 
the primroses are not entirely

         sedate, sitting prettily as a

complaisant cat, without the calculation.

 
meanwhile self-aggrandising narcissi

         brashly stick out their orange tongues

defying frost, a wildish windiness

 
The very light has gone gold-

the frost in the morning

         relaxes into the sun’s embrace

kissed by an old and skilful lover

 
while all around there is a loosening

          a suffusion of Eros

as the earth widens her thighs

 
 Day and night are equitable-

yet how can the work a day world grasp

this too sweet, too sexy sensuality

 
our hearts become like wellsprings

         we collectively tip our chins

and bask, adapting to the blink of warmth

 
we all roll back on our heels

         turning our cheeks towards joy

balanced between earth and sky

This Week in Corrogue…

 
It’s been unseasonably cold with March growling and howling Siberian gusts in from the east. March brought our first snow of the winter.

 
As one local said of the weather, “All the old signs seem to have gone.” You used to be able to forecast the weather from knowing all those signs. But they do not seem to signify in ways they were once understood.

 
Certainly everything is quite mixed up. Snowdrops that should appear in February for St. Brigid’s Day are flowering still in my neighbour’s garden. The daffodils are out, which is heartening but my crocuses collapsed with the unexpected onslaught of frost.

 
What began to encourage me that March might depart lamb-like was sighting two phenomena. First, the mint, dormant all winter, is re-emerging.  Today, I could have leapt if I hadn’t been tethered to Murphy and Pippin’s lead, when I sighted the first primrose on the Relic Road.

 
What is truly immutably seasonal is the light. Dawn is smudgy at 7:30 am. It is still light at nearly 7:30 when I take the dogs out for the last walk of the day. This is what I love about living here in Ireland. I love the lengthening days to summer solstice when it feels as if we only really have two hours of ‘real’ dark and a desultory twilight up until midnight.

 
The flip side of this is that the winter dark is intense and the hours are long. Too long for many people. I, however, was the child who sunshine made itch and loved the cool shade of the cellar during the long, hot and humid summers of my childhood in north-eastern American. I am sure it rather alarmed my mother, but it seems to be constitutional. I like the cool temperate climate with its dramatic light and dark and equinoctial slant.  The light is so numinous I don’t even mind the rain.

 
 
© 2006 Bee Smith

Tobar Mhuire, St. Brigid’s Day
Stone steps lead down to a
floor of leaf mould,
seasons upon seasons
composted ivy and hawthorn.

The well is dry
as a crone’s ovaries.
In this driest of winters
there is neither a puddle or even
a thimbleful of dew pooling.

Berried ivy strangles the thorn.
The healing flees to the tree nearest,
so they say, when a holy well
runs dry. Listen to its panting,
a small sighing, as
the ivy grips tighter.

Yet we leave bits of ourselves here-
coins – varying denominations and
dominions of change, the ragged
red Bhrat Brid, some rosary beads,
paper hankies disintegrating our ills.

Still the supplications come
rising up in puffs of frosty breath.
Let the snowdrops come. Let the snowdrops come.
Oh Blessed Lady, please,
hear our prayer.
 

This Week in Corrogue…

I walk our two dogs, Murphy and Pippin, at least twice a day. Frequently we walk up our lane to the next townland, Tubber, or Tobar Mhuire (Mary’s Well) in Irish. The well’s stone structure is still sound. Local long-term unemployed men keep the grass trim in summer.

The well has been dry for a long while. The townland was well populated in the nineteenth century and supported two shops. A huge freak flood wiped out the townland. It may also have physically altered the watercourse that fed the well. Today the townland’s only residents are cattle and sheep, foxes and badgers, as well as many wild bird species.

Despite the holy well’s dry status people do still visit and leave the traditional offerings. Someone has left a rather 1960’s style glass picture of the Blessed Mother. It is alleged that Our Lady appeared at this holy well at some point in the mists of the past. But as to the exact date when this may have happened that too has merged back into the mists. It is even beyond the memory of my ninety-four year old neighbour Delia.

There is a bottle of Lourdes water from a pilgrimage in 2005, bootlaces tied to ivy clinging onto the stone, rosary beads festooning the branches. There is an assortment of American quarters, English pennies and Irish euro cents. The tradition is to tie a hanky or rag on the tree beside the well. As the elements wear it away so your ailment will disintegrate. The wishing well tradition of tossing in money in payment for favours granted has got mixed in with the original rag offering tradition.

Locally, the ‘pattern day’ – the day when you do a ritual rota of prayers (the pattern) to effect the cure – is 15th August, the feast of Our Lady’s assumption into heaven. However, there are even older traditions that say that the well’s power to cure is effective at Halloween (31st October – 2nd November), St. Brigid’s Feast (1st-2nd February), Beltaine (May Day or 1st May) and Lughnasa (31st July – 2nd August. These are equally propitious times to visit a holy well for a required cure.

©  2006 Bee Smith