In the Gloaming

 

Martin Hayes playing a road’s river-silvery sheen

in the dying light of a November evening, north Clare.

Karst’s grey, slough’s lush greenery the last colours

before the nightly closing; a wind blowing angry off

Galway Bay, spitting splinters of rain, paring the skins

of the Burren hills above the loping dogs of electric wires

and the congealed pitch of conversations running alongside

every road. A single yellow-coloured window in the murky

hulk of a hillside at once inviting and shivering; a lone human

habitation - whisper from a fossilised sea-bed.

His notes flowing, drops of rain streaming along the underside

of  those wires; wind’s metal scraping through that empty place 

and the ear of God five miles out to sea.