A Poem
A sharp wind spins the mountain bog-cotton
speckled around deep shafts, soft holes
fraught with darkened brown water
which soap the ancestral cuts
on my blackened picking hands —
as on animal knees I crawl through
the heather mouthing wild blueberries
marked by the hunger of famine ghosts
sinewed inside me eating blades of grass,
their vapours on the gravel cradled stones
seep into my aging bones
a spectral heave of mournful sighs
drawing me onwards down
towards their Will-o’-the-wisp burial grounds,
here among unfinished memories floating
over sphagnum moss—I stop,
and upon this fermenting cross
place a loaf, the grief of bread
upon the life which lives within the dead.
Note – Within folkloric memory it is related there are famine graves
scattered across Grageen Fen, should you unintentionally traverse one you would
be encircled and trapped in a terrible deathly hunger. To escape this
fate it was advisable to carry some bread and to share it with the dead.