The Ghent Review Volume1, Number 1, summer 2016 | Page 10

is now an eye
now a polished mirror
it carries the sky and the world
to its heart
a place both here and beyond
makes possible belief
in the goddess
ambushing us into being
at one with the rise and fall
of her landsong
the cold water
alerts the skin like fire
ripples lap us
a circle dance
seeking alignment
with the shore

to plunge in
this total immersion
is to feel an ancestral touch
seaming the present with the past
to sense the power of the lake
to grant succession
over all who have come and gone
over all who will come and go
over all that is dull and terrible
in the telling of the stars and stones

shehy
shehy mountain may not inspire
the awe of the beetling cliffs of moher
here's not the drama of beara's serrated ranges
that crowd above glengarriff bay
but shehy's brow
of naked rock and heather