Ditch Bouquet, Inis Mór

Samuel Green

– for Sally

I am hiking west across the karst

toward the old ring fort on the highest

western cliffs a mile & a quarter

away. It’s a grey day: grey skies, a raised

grey sea beyond, grey-feathered birds

gliding above stone blocks the colour

of petrified smoke like salt licks shaped

by the slow tongues of rain & wind. From

a long gryke – crack in the limestone –

I pick out crane’s bill with its subtle

magenta. At the edge of a shallow

grass bowl comes the blue of harebell,

the purple of tufted vetch. I count seven

shells from sea snails in a clump of eyebright

thrown up by waves in winter, though it’s two

hundred sheer feet to the water. Beside a stile

in a rock wall, the spare blooms of thrift,

or sea pink, the deep red of hanging fuchsias

with their multiple clappers. There is a gruff

music in the loose slabs of the clint, a grind

& grunt beneath the feet. Saxifrage, rock breaker,

must hum a slow version of that to itself.

Across a drainage ditch, the white of meadowsweet –

milk curdler – then a scattering of yellow bedstraw

& loosestrife. Last, in a small bite of meadow

by the gate that opens to the main path rising

to the fort is a dazzling of ox-eye daisies

& a single patch of late-blooming cowslip

offering its deep yellow cups. Imagine me standing

at a sort of altar in the inner ring of stone

walls raised 4000 years ago on the sea

cliffs. I lay my offering down on the side

that weather does not love, as though

it matters they were gathered & arranged

from all that racked & ragged grey, as though

I actually picked each flower I named.

Poetry Ireland Review Issue 124:

Edited by Eavan Boland

Poetry Ireland Review 124 contains new poems from Paula Meehan, Ciarán O'Rourke, Lizzy Nichols, Mark Ward, Gabriel Rosenstock, Özgecan Kesici, Doireann Ní Ghríofa, and many other compelling voices. Also included is Eilean Ni Chuilleanáin's remembrance of her Cork childhood, excerpted from The Vibrant House: Irish Writing and Domestic Space, a book of essays reviewed in issue 124 by Caitríona O'Reilly. Other books considered in this issue include collections from Annemarie Ní Churreáin, Mark Granier, Tara Bergin, The Cambridge Companion to Irish Poets, and the Collected Poems of the late Dennis O'Driscoll, and there's also a short interview with Thomas Kinsella along with an essay on Kinsella as poet and civil servant. Another Kinsella is this issue’s Featured Poet, Alice Kinsella, and all artwork for the issue is supplied by artists associated with the Olivier Cornet Gallery on Great Denmark Street, around the corner from Poetry Ireland.

Available now to purchase online or in all good bookstores.