fragments
from my travel writing notebook
I’m writing to you from the north-west coast of Donegal County, Ireland. I’ll soon be venturing southward into the Connemara. There is much to appreciate about travel. For me, I love the between—liminal threads, hints and nudges, fragments, overlaps, whispers… all the morsels sweet and small that seem to always know exactly when to peek out to say hello.
In the spirit of travel, play, and delight of the between, I offer you seven poetic wisps from my notebook… all are loosely formed and unfinished and also, whole and enough as they are. May they meet you with their magic exactly where you are.
Offering
You hold me in your circle
so, I offer you a button.
I tell you of my heart,
and let you
show me yours.
Goo on a stump
Remnant. Left
over. Un
longed. De
tached. Maybe
of slug or snail. Also,
bubbled village, con
stellations of spiral, end
less galaxy. Every
thing mapped
and imaginal.
Silence isn’t lonely
You sit in stillness.
Mist and cold. Thistle and sheep.
Nothing here is waiting.
Between is a different kind of time.
Held and dissolving.
Choir of flies. Hymns of dew.
Each prayer echoes.
Everything, song.
Into the moss
I see your eyes, hear your hum, sense your millennia. My feet sink into thick centuries at your feet. I step into your castles, peer through your windows. Slugs, nettle, dragon, and witch. A purple flower marks a gate. One frog reveals a path. Drops of rain pull threads from the veil. Your song emerges from beneath my bones. Not somewhere else. We are here.
Ted
I smiled at the sheep of you
before I saw your eyes.
Hide and peek, hide
and peek—
caverns of light,
rooted song for dancing
with or without
the music.
Wool laundry
On all the fences you leave your laundry.
Bountiful clumps, matted, pressed firm into the hold of barbed metal.
Or, scattered light and loose as clouds breezing.
My mind traces the moment and finds a long, wet afternoon,
a cuddled group of you piled warm, wide eyes looking through mist.
Or, bird-song morning with a fresh field to explore, and you roam,
run the edges,
pause here and there to scratch yourself,
leave bits along the way for us to (maybe) find
and (maybe) learn
what it means to watch, to stay still,
to let be.
Slug and a screw
Tell me there is no magic and I will tell you of the slug who whispered to my toes and let me watch her move with wise softness over mountains to show me a (hidden) screw. How she knew how to lay herself bare, belly arched over rust and rough, how she melted smooth breath upon it, bridged herself over, all while she read the rocks with her antennae. And how, at the exact moment the morning sun poured itself over the rooftop, a single snail fell down from the vines above where I sat and landed at my feet: Good morning. Welcome to the glory of this day.
Beltany Stone Circle
Ards Forest
dog at pub
near the northern tip of Horn Head
in the backyard stone garden of Sandhill House
A Beltane labyrinth prayer on Marble Hill Beach at sunrise.
