CBerry@nrdc.org 

Tapping In

I go out to the early hill
That's sheened and bristled after rain,
A world made clear, come to standstill
Nothing to goad it toward a change

Or redefine a weather shape
That's stalled between a clear and dull,
That swabs the crack of dawn landscape
In silence, unperturbed and full. 

I go out to the rocks above
Those small holdings, scant Carna farms
That learn their owners love and death
Season to season, arm to arm

They break this earth and make it work
These sons of meager acreage,
Primal alchemists of the dirt
They pass their art down as the age.

I go beyond where there are walls
To bog uncut, to common land
Where briars and whins scrab, catch and maul
The flat flesh of the parting hands

That lift them up to let me pass
On further up the soft incline;
They close behind me once unclasped,
Quiver and slowly realign.

I go until I'm beyond view
Between bogholes and further in
Through green fleshed folds that cleanse, renew,
That move as water over skin

Into me wavelike, regular,
The bogs low pulse divined and tapped
Fuses blood and mind together,
Feeds famished thoughts on its brown sap,
Lets me within its ancient vein.


* scrab - colloquial of scratch

The First Sting

It's the summer of my third year
And I have slipped for once unchecked
Into the fields beyond my bounds

Where my short body will not stretch
Above the wild grass or the stems 
Of African daisies where bees,

The season's door to door salesmen, 
Alight from stamen to stamen
Bartering, for nectar, pollen

Spores they have extracted from
The yellow flesh of the male plant.
My small arms flap up after them

As my fingers ache to capture all
The things that rise and lurk beyond
The limits of my current reach;

Holding is grasping I have learnt
And I mean to hold everything
In those soft, threshing hands of mine

That careless swat at the loose air
And come back empty as they were
Until the first sting cuts their flesh

To teach them hard a fear of bees
That is lifelong as any fear
That settles on the self in youth.

© Copyright, Ciaran Berry.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.