The Ruins of Timoleague Abbey

I am gut sad.

I am flirting

with the green waves,

wandering the sand,

feeding reflection

into the seaweed foam.

That Shaker’s moon

is up.

Crested by corn-colored stars

and traced by those witchy scribblers

who read the bone-smoke.

No wind at all — 

no flutter

for foxglove or elm.

There is a church door.

In the time

when the people

of  my hut lived,

there was eating and thinking

dished out to the poor

and the soul-sick in this place.

I am in my remembering.

By the frame of  the door

is a crooked black bench.

It is oily with history

of the rumps of sages,

and the foot-sore

who lingered in the storm.

I am bent with weeping.

This blue dream

chucks the salt

from me.

I remember

the walls god-bright

with the king’s theology,

the slow chorus

of  the low bell,

the full hymn

of  the byre and field.

Pathetic hut.

Rain-cracked and wind-straddled.

Your walls bare-nubbed

by chill flagons

of ocean spit.

The saints are scattered.

The high gable

is an ivy tangle.

The stink of fox

is the only swinging incense.

There is no stew

for this arriving prodigal,

no candled bed.

My kin

lie under the ground

of this place.

My shape

is sloughed with grief.

No more red tree

between my thighs.

My eyes are milk.

Rage my pony.

My face has earnt

the grim mask.

My heart a husky gore.

But my hand. My hand

reaches through this sour air

and touches

the splendid darkness

of my deliverer.