Murmurations, and: Another World

Murmurations

I

"We must allow one another to be sadsometimes," he said that first duskwhen starlings gathered and swarmed,

stripped the bushes of the last fruit,ate animal feed from the troughs.Afterwards, a silence not like in cities.

They dug into their new life, new country,collected sacred water from Catholic wells,shrines, sprinkled its protection in everycorner of the house like their neighbours.

In time they forgot their own language,the local dialect murmured betweenthem even in intimacy.

Decades passed. They leanedinto each other, the landscape.

Each spring, sleep deprivedfrom February to May,they ran to the lambing sheds.

Gloved, they pulled the hind legsof a new lamb out, breathing againonly when the mother licked it.

Ii

The day he died she dismantledthe lambing sheds whooshingcreatures onto a startledneighbour's land

determined as an Ancientwho appeased the Godsby throwing valuablesinto a sacred river.

Now her life feels oversized.She's beginning to rememberher first language

does not yet know she wantsto be somewhere else.Her dreams swarmwith starlings.

Another World

That weekend we sped west and southto a friend not quite at the tip of the island.Later we stood in her bog-sculpture garden haloedin the first strong sun of the year, shadowedby the ancient ravelled figures she had pulledfrom peat while they were still sleeping.Now they watched the dappled bog and stone with us,as if we and they should be clothed in hemp and skins.

That mountain range shot through its blue-black greensand browns with amber light just borrowed from the sun.The furze blazed its prickly gold. It blinded the timid purplesof the heather as you aimed the camera lens. Two counties henceyour mother lay in bed counting the hesitant days of her ninety-firstyear, the shop-bought roses of our visit already fallen to the floor.