Éowyn

a poem about storms

Show me a storm 
that’s not a jealous lover. 

Éowyn’s awake; wants you 
to know she’s awake; 

strips bare the writhing bed 
of Strangford Lough, 

whip-cracking sheets of rain 
up the mizzled hills and over family graves.

Clambering clouties plat the naked limbs
of Ballyphillip's gorse-bearded jawline.

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These corridors are sacred now;
mass cards snagged upon the dog-rose; 

hatchbacks parked parallel to St. Patrick's 
pointing beams the other way 

make ghosts of their own love-making, blown 
from their eternal rest like visions of themselves in their twenties.

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The wren receives her own chorus - hollow the bones -
having swallowed the lone red rose: silk and sexless and

tied to a song post; rain-darkened and tested on the teeth -
bramble-bound and chewing the foam; oasis down to styrofoam.

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She took them all into the night: every airy head of rapeseed,
and all the other drumlins were robbed of the chance to speak.

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In the morning, 
the worst has passed; 

Éowyn mourning, 
up and down the Ballyblack: 

chainsaws idle - 
the silence of slumber.

Photo by Edward Howell on Unsplash

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A little context: We had a pretty nasty but awesome storm over the entirely of the British Isles this weekend. Coastal regions of Northern Ireland were hit pretty hard. Record breaking winds were recorded in the region of 114mph! With the exception of a mature Ash down in our garden, I feel we got off pretty light. Some were not so lucky, with damage to their properties and power outages that have lasted until early this week.

One thing I noticed, as I was passing our local Chapel, was that the high winds had cut up from the Lough to shear across the graveyard and lifted all of the grave tributes into the adjacent roadside hedges. There, I found silk roses and red bows, hand written notes to lost loved ones, and even some Christmas wrapping paper that said: Ho Ho Ho.

Normally, I would have driven past such a thing and dismissed it all as rubbish - but these days . . . needless to say I received some funny looks from some of the mass-goers, braving the tail of the storm, with their coats zipped up to their eyeballs, as I rifled through the hedges, looking for inspiration.

Finally, for any readers from outside of Ireland or Britain, who might not know what ‘clouties’ are, I couldn’t provide you with anything as convenient as a definition, without also robbing you of the chance to read, for yourselves, about an ancient and much loved local custom.

Cheers, and thanks for reading,

Conor

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