Three Sisters

 

Past Minnaunmore Rock loom the cliffs of

Ballincolla & Three Sisters––like pages of wild

Holy books of the Old Earth––as boys play roof ball

& the aged pray low in candled pews at Ballyferriter.

Fishermen tie their lines mid-Cuan Ard na Caithne

With brooding anchors & brandy as I circle the

Dunes, wondering what a person can hope to achieve

In this interminably brief life but see through illusion,

Hear the strange keys of the songs of the wind, & pass

The exquisite lavender sheep’s bit scabinous flower.

A shell on the outside, a ghost on the inside––what’s

Wisdom without joy, but the accumulation of zeroes.

 

 

Dingle Peninsula

16 July 1999

 

 

[Published in Quien Sabe Mountain:

Poems 1998-2004. © 2004 by Jim Cohn.]