From my Mountain

From my mountain, I can see the world below – but I can’t stay here – I’ve things to be…
…I am a droplet of dew on the springtime grass, a crystal in the sun-warmth, next a tear
joining the gambolling stream, bouncing leaping off the stones like a child at playtime,
sometimes trickling, sometimes bubbling bubbling dashing into rocks and hollows, combing
locks of waterweed and playing teasing water nymphs as their siren singing tempts me to
linger, but seduced instead by the irresistible gravitation call to tumble faster, faster, faster,
headlong falling faster, faster…
…until my sleighride takes on a steadier pace as I am welcomed into the Sheen river,
pausing at each pool, Sheen Flat Sand and Weir, spate bursting banks and flooding fields,
queuing to be rainbow spray over roaring falls tumbling and splashing playing catch up with
the trout dodging the grilse run onward growing widening filling living reckless free, free,
free…
… free to dive into the bursting Inbhear Scein, praying under Our Lady’s Bridge, mackerel
racing swans seabirds heron still silent, estuary seal selkie cormorant eagle nesting, jellyfish
on a mission salt meadows creeks tireless shingle tide rising falling dolphin whale, while still
the cries of the Guardians of Light keen for the drowned Scein in every seabird sound
leaving, leaving Neidin, broadening the river mouth, swirling with the Sneem River knot,
petitioning the saint Mocheallóg for intercession, liberated by Daniel, past Amergin’s landfall
where the law and poetry began, breaking weeping pilgrim kissing homage to the holy Sceilig
Mhichil, leaving one world through the Bull Rock gate racing to the edge of the past world
over the horizon of the Bay into the freedom of the other world…
…Here! Here! I do, I will! I am the bride of the wind and the wave! I am wed with my family
again at last, measuring the distance of nine waves into the high sea salty wild Atlantic,
breaking free, squall taking me where it will, calm rhyming me into swells, into silence
beyond in a painted ocean, knowing who I am, alone, child of my past, parent of my future…
… travelling and marvelling far, far, servant of the master of the currents of the world past
the slave-coasts and Azores, Good Hope to Horn through the vastness of ice-ocean
Southern Seas, drifting past the smells of Sandalwood and spice, bidding farewell to lei cast
out far from shore to scream eastward with the roaring forties and Northern sleepy rest in
Sargasso gyre…
… feeling the call of home through how long? seven years or seven thousand? what is time
to me? and now…
… my spirit answers the unanswerable, beckoning by lighter air, rising, rising, communing
into clouds, ephemeral spring morning mist, host to a rainbow, taking breath, lace white,
scudding cotton, darking with crackles and sparks chorusing, pealing thunder lightnings,
blown to the East, falling, falling, falling…
…onto the crest of Killabunane, my home my pinnacle my end my birth…
…for from my mountain, I can see the world below – but I can’t stay here – I’ve things to
be…