Falling
For Anna
I it’s getting close to the end of summer and after the long good night the hill-folk can barely remember the place and the foxes and the coyotes coming down from the bare mountaintops to nose the coal-dust weeping under a sheltering sill, cry ribbons of rain into the far harvest, for there had been a great consensus: an open-air canticle for every candled belfry; stout mountain-mouthed men leafing pound coins in a pocket amass in crabbed tones as broken glass on the skin of the bandsman’s drum– only pointed oaths and hearsay would ever make it into verse again and it’s a hollow composition the brogue that wrings the poitín out of potatoes II and you were mostly focused on falling home– heavy with the weight of breath before the dawn– and beyond and just like your Mother’s skin, the coastal lightning, brightening the chamber of the vessel within and you gave in– and you begin– and taking after your only kin when the frost of night on back of the door might dally– turn of the distorted hinge and mire the aimless din of the town’s own angels– so fall away, Anna, fall on home, the drumlins will be draped with blankets; walled as a pillow-fort buttresses indifference to yesterday’s ships run aground and drowned, for the wheat will all but die before bitter August's known yet yesterday’s runaways tomorrow– all come home ***
Life Update:
Our fourth child has finally arrived! And with her arrival has come a healthy dose of much expected craziness here at home (and the eventual adaptation to all our routines).
She went 17 days past her expected due date, and like a true O’Hare woman, didn’t seem to mind keeping us all waiting. July is month of much celebration here in Northern Ireland, and it felt like the world was spinning away on it’s axis whilst we were stuck in an epicentre of our own making.
We also had our first home-birth. Which was an incredible and surreal experience and further proof to me, that oftentimes, the old ways are still the best ways, maintaining a wonderful mysticism that’s often lost in the sterility of modern western existence.
Much of the above poem carries something of the weight of that frustration in waiting, the spiralling summer and a renewed sense of attachment to our home, as a haven for our children, not only in birth, but also in their futures too.
I will back writing on a more regular basis now, thanks for reading, and thanks for sticking with me,
Much love,
Conor



Congratulations!
Congratulations, C.J.! Wonderful news…”so fall away, Anna, fall on home” And home this child arrived! Lovely verse, from the heart.