Last Circle

Congregated in a circle in a field in Cork,

backs hunched dark against the driving rain,

heads covered, faces hidden, unfathomable

presences humming low

-- the sea coiling inside a mountain,

the wind trapped inside a hollow oak,

gale stuck in the high stone tower

all day, all the rain long --.

Incantation, tumulus and ditch, tumulus and ditch

concentrically droning outward,

draining into the earth’s pinna, swallow-hole,

the whorl of light, green and time.

The Trees at the Rath*

Trees keening winter nights away,

their wails woven into the wind;

heads of hair like seaweed taken from the strand,

flails knotted in insoluble puzzles.

Underground, roots, twisting toward some source,

shaped by memory;

trees like abandoned lovers,

scratching down the marble of night-time.


* Fairy ring, fort