In the absence of trees, walls
baffle the wind –
shoals of grey stones laid flat
or stacked upright,
wedged tight
or loosely set in a gap.
Through a tangle of fields,
Pádraic guides cows and calves
from the creigs
to orchid-speckled grass.
Rainwater brims in the stone tanks
he’s built or mended. He stalls
at the one he finished alone
the year his father died.
Limestone lives in his veins,
like seawater in the blood
of his fishermen neighbours.
His farm reaches the shoreline,
where last night
the rising ocean tossed boulders
that razed the boundary wall.
He begins to rebuild,
to protect the thin soil
grown from seaweed and sand.
Jane Clarke’s third collection, A Change in the Air, was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Poetry Prize and the Forward Prize for Best Collection in 2023
baffle the wind –
shoals of grey stones laid flat
or stacked upright,
wedged tight
or loosely set in a gap.
Through a tangle of fields,
Pádraic guides cows and calves
from the creigs
to orchid-speckled grass.
Rainwater brims in the stone tanks
he’s built or mended. He stalls
at the one he finished alone
the year his father died.
Limestone lives in his veins,
like seawater in the blood
of his fishermen neighbours.
His farm reaches the shoreline,
where last night
the rising ocean tossed boulders
that razed the boundary wall.
He begins to rebuild,
to protect the thin soil
grown from seaweed and sand.
Jane Clarke’s third collection, A Change in the Air, was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Poetry Prize and the Forward Prize for Best Collection in 2023
