NI Book Oct 21st

Photography © Richard Sloan

Poetry © Geraldine Rennison

All rights reserved





North coast

I know where the river
runs dark peat brown

where salmon spring
and the heron stares

nearby a ghost of a shower
with swift vapours of grey

slides across the waves
and the wind spirits rise

as gannets
lunge into the sea – their sky

feasting on stars

La brizna de herba The Blade of grass
Me ensensas you show me

El anillo de verde puro the ring of pure green
Atado en un nudo verdadero tied in a true knot

Puesto alrededor de su dedo palido laid round your pale finger
Mis palabras se callan my words are quietened





Sunday

from the cottage
past the curl of a tree
where time is in the resting place
of the breath
Rathlin sits
not revealing its secrets

while sheep
in the gold of the morning
have their wool stolen by trees and by barbs
that pluck at the soft down
under the bridal spray
of the hawthorn



Shoreline to the heavily wrapped men of Dunseverick
for Jim their ruddy skin barbed
against the blustering cold
Tell me of the boy who lived in the white cottage waiting for the salmon with gaping eyes
the cottage with the piano
tucked in the cosy the open fire grabbed by large gloved hands
peat stacked thrusting them out of the comfortable sea bed
smoke forcing up the chimney into the northern air
spouting too at Arthur’s puddle cavern
you tell me of Eileen Rosaleen and Alana where the waves gurgle and roar underground
playing posting letters regurgitating kelp into the air
through the bedroom’s air vent
all this in your memory like the quietness then and now did you scour the shore for planks and netting

do you hear the dissonance of the birdsong what did the sea give to you
as you made your way to the bend on the road
you tell me of the brisk days
the fishing boat Prospect
a flash of red or ceanothus blue
shying off the rocks
visible between troughs
as it beats into harbour



Dunseverick cottage diary

Monochrome waking

the sky-sea off Rathlin deepening

through the spectrums of grey

charcoal midnight dense

purple slate storm grey

terns scat through the air spooked by the wind
with the weather
or sense the urgency
the same urgency lived

with the sea dark piling into Port na Weelan
Islay not visible



Towards Geeragh Point

the sea at rest is unrippled
hushed in remembrance of the neapolitan sky
with which it went to sleep last night –
when the sea’s pink light

settled –

now deep blue on blue
the sea
reflective – measured– calm –

is watchful – ruffled by the breeze –





IT WAS GREEN

Ten thousand times I’ll ask you
do you hear the waterfall rippling from Port Moon’s sky
tumbling down its rocky path

through bouldered streams
in its hurry to the sea
where time flows over the basalt

the sky a filtered remnant of night
I see you scan the columns
the cliffs where fulmars cackle nest high edged

and soar as they meet us eye to eye

in this bird-land land of flight

land of sea-chiselled stacks

Near the cottage at sunrise
carrion crows land on the sheep trough

waiting to steal food
while rooks arrive in ones and twos

squashing together cawing who goes first
from bending tightrope telegraph wires





sheep make dizzy paths round stacks
in our otherworld of fossils
flat rock-tiles slaves to the tides
towards the stretching beach end of arches
caves and eiders

we hear the clattering pebbles shift
with each tidal pull each pulls us in
along this jagged coastline of yellow lichen rock maps
from Port-na-weelan
to the white church on the hill



Sensing the blue hour
we know its presence

the sunset darkening the horizon
waves rumbling the boulders

light filtering minute by minute
stepping down and down to near night

feeling the moment in our bones
a silent blueness

a don’t-talk-now blueness
becomes part of us and we of it

as black hills become silhouettes
we disappear into the sky



Lough reeds wait for spring on Rathlin
it’s quiet except for the constant wind
and crows

the hum of this place holds us
we see old buildings old walls
with angles leading the eye

through the tumbledown rooms
to see winter-tired trees
growing up through the absent roof

in between walls warm velvet moss
on the moss on the moss for my pillow
it was green and I was gone

the maybes and the maybe-nots
the storm may come it may snow
we’d like to see the seals at Ushet Port

they might not be there
the lapwing will land
you will see the ferry

which came in today
but might not go out tomorrow
the puffins will be here soon



As the sunlight catches the white of the seagulls flying

everyone wants to see a puffin
square ladies and the walking party from Belgium
stepping off the Spirit of Rathlin straight on to Bertie’s bus
heading for West Lighthouse
as we are walking up Sedgy Glen
to the dripping with fuchsia waterfall
passing the open door ferry port church
the always been there church
down the hill from the chapel up the hill
with the make sure you look back view down there
where we watch starlings land in for lunch on the kelp
pecking insects as if they were blueberries
the still life heron posing for hours near the bladderwrack
temporary home of the orange beaked oyster catchers
kleep kleeping as they fly off to the lighthouse



backdrop

In this low the weather hangs on a washing line
on a no drying two coat day

in the absence of sea butterflies
it lingers like a winter’s dawn

slate clouds stare at the sea which stares back
as gannets patrol this Sea of Moyle runway

there’s going to be murder on the break water

In Church Bay harbour black backed gulls
are intent on stealing eider ducklings

There’s going to be a new ferry

here where seals are boulders
time is held

on a brisk day the waves bolt
beyond the sea wall



The Peregrine and the Hare

I walk the land at Roonavoolin
past cattle on
grassy banks edged by the cliff

he sits silently on his ledge
I disturb him

his screech rakes through me
sifting centuries
to those who stood here before
who also heard
how the ripple tide
sought sun and moon

I turn

a hare stands hind-legged
proud staring

I tramp his land too
his prize blades of grass
where orchids look stunned by this day
of wispy sky
in seamless reflection
of the sea



Happenings
Sedgy Glen
For Lily

On that day our Rathlin day
violet fuchsia extreme with beauty

lay gracefully with green leaf
through which we peeped

saw the torrent
saw the frog

the frog sat in his heaven
time of spawn long forgotten

now guarded by the torrent
flung from high ground

water rained



Rathlin metal rain
Sheets of rain thump on the dried wood
of the copse floor

forcing splints to shift
then drift down deep

deeper down the puddled track

further to the shore boulders lie
Selkies beached like metal teardrops

deposits from the Ice age
seals with ice pool eyes glacier deep

from the world of greys



Yet the shadows come - Rathlin

Shadows
come ashore
moving silently ghosts hurrying to
be warmed on hot stones
where we sit

one by one
they come stealthily beneath the crest
midnights of rising wave

I see no sign of them
touching the sea edge

wait

for they rush now
I see them

but there is nothing
in the washed seaweed



Fionnuala

At Slough na mara
child-swans endure storms

cast in the sea of Moyle
under Aoife’s spell

not far away a field of sheep
recovering from winter’s rain

where new-borns sleep
on he matted warmth of mother’s back

While fuchsias bud
and bluebells ink the woods

The light is still
broken tunes weave through the grasses

where you sit a sound away
from the lost swans on Carrig na rone

With eyes closed you listen
for tomorrow’s day

while eiders coo
their mating songs in pattern

Rathlin’s wild garlic a wedding
green and white

where the river flows with winter’s rain
past buds pushing out

from bare branches
reaching upwards