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At Glendalough

I consider Glendalough, Co Wicklow, Ireland (where Iseult Gonne is buried and where some chapters of “A Dance in Time” are set) to be one of the most inspiring places on earth.  I spent as much time as possible there while writing that novel and

I wrote this poem in tribute to all that was given to me there.  

Day Away

After climbing paths that urge you up
and further up
to top the crashing waterfall,
then higher

After walking through the ruins of seven churches
head tilted back to view the top
of the round tower that took the shape
of the saint’s steeple,
and thrust it up, three times as high,
from earth to sky,
to mark the ground you walk upon
as holy

After being stopped, and stopped again,
by sightings of bare mountain
dropping sheer into the valley, sliced 
by a mesh of rivers and falls
all rushing to empty
into the two, long lakes that somehow take the gush
and hold it
still

You will know the allure of here 
(as in all the places we call sacred)
is the silence

the voice of your own blood, emptying,
dropping
into the deep.