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November
As we turn the corner where the lane divides,
one track running to Summers’ house
and one hightailing through the empty fields,
a flock of sparrows rises from its busyness,
like dust of the year just gone.
Red haws still smoulder
and there is the small but perfect miracle
of a woodbine flowering
in the face of winter’s wind.
This is November and the mountain bends
against the first nightfall of sleeting, sightless snow.
Times are tough, light hardly breaks
but our days will not be always so.
(For Alan Counihan)
John MacKenna
November
Growing up we called them stares.
In the lexicon, now, they’re starlings.
They return to the same breeding ground
Season after season. It happens to be
Our garage, set in a secluded spot,
A self build, with bird guards omitted, mea culpa.
They’re not the same starlings, but the same DNA.
They’re like our blackbirds, but with sturdier legs,
And are more upright, with short tails.
Coming in pairs; he in black, she in brown plumage.
Numerous nesting pairs make up their colony.
We know them to be gregarious and accomplished mimics.
With synchronized egglaying leading to
The whole colony fledging together, ingenious.
Both feed their young; flies, snails and worms.
In short order, the nesting colonies
In a quick turnaround, bolster their numbers.
Enough to make their own mini-murmuration.69
Juveniles, of both genders, dressed in brown plumage,
Are ready to join the ranks.
Strutting their stuff on our ridge tiles,
Flocking together like sheep and cows.
They learn about strength in numbers,
Stronger together, minding themselves.
Murmurations are their forte, the bigger the better.
This tradition, born back in the mists of time.
A crafty creation, to keep themselves warm, and confuse predators
And geared to fly to the lower latitudes.
If that’s the scientific, what about the aesthetic?
Well, they are nature’s great performers of aerial displays.
Driving down the Crutt Hills, one September evening
I spotted a murmuration in my rearview mirror.
I took a left turn, they followed.
I swung a right, they followed.
I felt as if they were escorting me home.
Alas! I lost them under the high trees at Owens’s.
Sean Mansfield
(Clogh Writers)
Mountain Aisling For Maeve
Sons and daughters of Erin stop a while, take a sup of wine, and sit by my knee
Let me tell you of this land, this holy isle the Innis your grandfather’s country
Come close shelter under the hills of Slievenamon marble and granite boulder
Safe now held by the mountain of woman their soft hands rest on our shoulder
Watch the Taibshe Ban the ghost maiden her moonlit sword high on the crest
Silvered braided hair a jewelled broach of red gold snakes woven on her dress
Isolde, Grainne, Bridey waited there long before Patrick built his tall Paschal fire
Laughing hero Finn McCool bathing them on Lammastide lost within fey desire
On the bleak rocky edge phantoms rest in bitter knotted arms of a cruel tree
Clinging to thin soil lashed by lightning storm alone with fairy Lunantishee
The Draighean blackthorn marching down the hillside thickets of dark spears
Its arms a shillelagh, its fingers a witch’s stick, its nails a poison of night fears
The old river runs the valley carrying all to our city of king built towers of stone
It whispers of the mountain girl song of forgotten prince sleeping on his throne
The lamb will slip past gate keeper his crown pulled from the land of the young
Fences as firewood, black caves given light come Maeve rise the song is sung
Andrei Markewitz
