Passing Through
Uncertain if it was my home,
the shifting lens of time bears down
on the house – nearer the road,
the lawn shrunken; quartz stones
that bordered clay beds beneath trees
and shrubs, sunken in the grass.
I take the lane at the bend of the road.
Main artery of the farm and lifeblood
of my early years, the rugged, sheltered
path was a kindergarten of delight.
On the brow of Scuab Field
I name landmarks of old in the valley;
Clodiagh chapel concealed
by a copse of trees, a family home
where my old school had been
and the sleek back of the River Nore
snaking through lush green meadows.
Will these fields ever again be as prized?
My father as if conducting a great orchestra
drew out the best from his ensemble.
Crops and animals rotated,
in harmony with the land,
each child and adult playing their part
to deliver a melodic chime to our days:
fodder, firewood, food for our table.
Now the fallow fields are silent,
our little lives passed through them
as if we had never been.
*Passing Through was previously published in Skylight 47 Issue 13.
Marsh Path
I come for the briary bushes,
late March, whitethorn greening again,
a blizzard of blossoms on leafless blackthorn.
The path beside sloping trees, a tumble-down ditch
looped around an oasis of wild,
rusty sedge and withered grasses pockmarked
by stagnant waters where little grebes,
moorhens and mallards live.
It mirrors a lane I knew by heart
stones to step on, stones to avoid,
violets in the webbed foot of a sycamore,
swathes of primroses lining ditches,
seasons that returned bearing gifts –
wood for the fire, berries,
leaves crisp as poppadums underfoot.
Now a rumble in the distance,
growls and groans grow louder, invade.
Behind the ditch, through metal railings,
a Jurassic Farm backing the nearby hotel,
life-sized dinosaurs, reptiles,
robotic T-Rex primed to rock and roar,
children screeching with delight
on a different path.
The Way it Happened, the Way it Is.
after Patrick Kavanagh
Our lives entwined in sod and stone,
the ordinary plenty you tilled
till crops of gold emerged:
soul seeker and friend,
your harvest feeds me still.
Miles and time divided us, you among
the briary arms of whitethorn ditches
where God stretched out her curvaceous body
in the drumlins of County Monaghan,
me running barefoot
in the fleecy green meadows of south Kilkenny.
Oh Yes! Your God was feminine
for heaven is lush and bountiful. On an April evening
as I ramble the lanes of old and bow
to the scent of primroses, I’ll think of you
along the headland of a ploughed field,
awake to your first dream with wings of light,
illness firing you in the kiln of Baggot Street hospital
the narrow chink taking you to that holy door.
The fool in me spent years moiling
around the remnants of a burnt-out fire,
snared by the briary resistance of thought,
yet still, pierced by slanting rays of a fiery sun.
Come Christmas I’ll read again your paean
to those days when both sides of the window panes
were white with frost, our ears cocked
for the footsteps of Santa,
the peal of a bell on the way to Mass.
Three Masses, like the three rivers surrounding me,
flowed into one, my Christmas mornings.
I nicked several notches on the church pew
with the cross of my rosary beads
for I was hungry and cold.
To arrive at the present knowing
there is no arrival, no grand healing
only the slow birthing of Self,
your great Amen, a truth I have come to realise,
So be reposed and praise, praise praise
the way it happened, the way it is.
Learn more about Nora on our Contributors’ Page.
(Photo: Lennart Tange/flickr.com/ CC BY 2.0)
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- Three Poems by Nora Brennan - February 15, 2024