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