Masatiompan

 

Alongside the repentance of curtains & rows of

Potatoes, the sensual turquoise of breaking waves

Weeps for the centuries-old farm house

& the endurance of the smell of buttermilk that

Cuts through the plows of mist, turning the impossible

Toward what is.

Where people have given up their roads,

A rain-soaked trail climbs furiously deeper

Into the sky, blind for now, overcome with clouds.

Slowly, the misty pass can be heard rising from the

Dead––carved out of air with forms more powerful

Than ours & sweeter than the ever present green

That fills the mouth of the sea.

 

 

Dingle Peninsula, Ireland

17 July 1999

 

 

[Published in Quien Sabe Mountain:

Poems 1998-2004. © 2004 by Jim Cohn.]