We knew it was time to pack up and go home, but it was Midsummer’s Eve on the Shannon, and
how could we leave?
And so we hummed gently upriver from Banagher in that last, long live glow from the West, as a slim, slight moon hung above us -waiting.
Engine cut, we drifted in a calm backwater, part of a peach-pink world. No breeze came up, but
somehow, a small, secret rustle of leaves in the stirring of the evening air.
The day was going -it seemed as if the great river was listening -and it was a moment too magic to speak. It was not ‘night-fall’ really-only the day slipping away for a while and darkness still
transparent.
We loved that river in all its power and gentleness -where flowers grew and trees leaned over -where there were fish, and birds, and bogs -where boat people talked and laughed together –
where Ireland spread out around us.
It was time to moor up to a tree, as the last corncrake called Good Night from the Callows.