Shape-shifter

The shape-shifter, Púca, in Irish mythology is a tricky guy. His moods vary hugely, from malevolent to mischevous, even, on occasion, to kindly. There is more than a suggestion that sightings and encounters with the Púca were alcohol induced. So, arriving home in the early hours with a variety of wounds on the body would, don't you know,  result from an unfortunate meeting with a puc goat on the  narrow road home.
There is however, in Púca's various guises, iconic images picked from the Irish landscape and  Irish lore. Though not of Irish origin, he, like so many immigrants over the centuries, became more Irish than the Irish themselves.
Here is Elaine Leigh's stunning 'Púca' which features in our collaborative work Above Ground Below Ground.

                                                                   
                                                         Shape-shifter

Gull I fly, spark from an anvil;

goat leaping, fraying rag.

Eagle swooping, slivered sunlight;

horse exhaling piston-jets of steam.

Hound darting, arrow-swift,

hare sentinel of the jewelled morning.

Lizard slithering tress down stone,

bull pounding bodhrán of the earth.

Stone Art

 

 

 

 

                            Stone at Newgrange photo by Johnbod. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Johnbod.

 

 

A man is carving shapes:

spirals, lozenges, chevrons;

the sun is looking over his shoulder.

Below, in the valley, the Boyne passes

 with a glint from its teeth,

the whitethorn is in full bloom,

the daylight hours are long. 

 

His hands are leather from handling flint;

a wave traverses the stone,

arcs toss on the crests,

they tip left then right;

tonight the moon is tipping left;

in three weeks daytime will be at its longest.

 

Eerie art

Reflections in puddles and pools can throw reality into the most unexpected compositions of forms and colours. Juxtaposed with the watery medium's actual surroundings, the resulting artistic effect can be stunning.
I find this to be  particularly true of bog holes. The spare beauty of the landscapes, the bleakness of winter skies in Ireland, the suggestion, (since they tend to be oblong, rectangular), of an ethereal grave. If I stop to look, I'm likely to find myself  absorbed into melancholic thoughts.

Bog Hole

 

Mute Michael laid out on water

shivers like a flag.

 

Fissures of sky rake him,

his mouth worms.

 

Night, extinguishing the bog cotton,

finds him alone

 

treading visions,

dressed in bottomless black.

 

 

 

 

Detail from painting by Elaine Leigh. 

A Meeting with Winter

The Cailleach is the goddess of  winter, Bríghde is her summer counterpart. A hag that can appear as a  beautiful young woman; she carries a staff that struck against the ground will cause it to freeze over instantly. She is associated with mountains, hills and cairns; the formation of landscape and the annual cycles and renewal in nature.

The looseness in interpretation of her powers, the large number of legends that surround her, her symbolism in relation to ecology and the state of the earth today, the leeway one has to represent her in  myriad ways makes, (and has made), her rich material for writers, poets and artists.

 

Driving a herd of goats down a gorge:

primeval creatures with colossal spiralling horns,

coarse matted hair, yellow eyes. 

Tendrils of hair trailing down her back,

silver streams through the buff tussocks,

the swirled bronze bracken of winter. 

Her face, graphite sheet of a waterfall;

eyes, dark crags in its flow;

at its foot a rowan’s red mouth. 

A staff held high,

above us hail stones ripened for a fall;          

she drove us from the mountain with lashes on our backs.

                                                                     from Above Ground Below Ground

I am weave

I am weave. Artwork by Elaine Leigh

 

I am weave,

flows bare bones of the land,

roots, blood my stealth;

streams mountain hair,

hillsides’ thoughts,

meadow waves;

bleaches sunlight, sugars earth,

rips the seas’ tides,

calls clockwork from branches,

drags bones down borrows,

drags days behind,

stirs the year.

from Above Ground, Below Ground

The  series of  poems for my collaboration with artist Elaine Leigh, Above Ground Below Ground, is getting its  final brush up.

This poem refers to the spookiness of the clusters of trees that often grow  around stone circles; even now the old superstitions weigh on those who would trespass after dark.

Inside the trees

is another place: unlit, uncharted.

At night even braggers refuse to enter

those grotesque tunnels.

 

At night boulders walk,

boughs flex their biceps;

high up, screeching necks

toss slicks of hair;

 

even the summer wind

squeals through like a hunted pig.

After dark  the trees stir cauldrons

of brains and guts.

 

She Takes to the Sky

Through baffled bogs, disengaged mountaintops,

I led whistling rocks, croaking ice

till earth turned its blue eye upward.

I drew cream grass from the ground,

graphite cliffs from the sea,

and all the time, slaking the thirst of rivers,

ran rigid fields amok. 

I laughed a stampede of one-legged herons,

cried chains of crocodiles,

roared bees;

and balancing on a lake-shore,

threw myself  to the winds

to fly with them like rain.

The Cailleach

Clay in her mouth,

clothed in darkness, caged in stone.

She speaks in

the crumbling of mountains,

creeping of oceans across continents.

She pauses;

earthworms devour boulders.

(from Above Ground Below Ground)

trees keening

Another beautiful painting by Elaine Leigh.The trees invested with human features, and life in the their wind-blown hair mirroring the neolitic artwork beneath the earth.

Trees keening winter nights away;

their wails woven into the wind. 

Heads of hair like seaweed from the strand,

knots tailing limply towards the sea.  

Underground, roots twisted toward some source,

shaped by memory. 

Trees like abandoned lovers,

scratching down the marble of night-time.

   

(Image by and  poem from a collaboration entitled "Above Ground Below Ground")