ARRIVALS
Lambay Island, County Dublin
As our boat approached, the shrieking cliffs dissolved
into thousands of fluttering flecks,
each one a bird swirling or huddling,
swooping, bickering or chattering,
living countless rivalries, battles and hopes
on narrow ledges or buffeting winds –
as we have since the sun first hatched, say the gulls –
since before the sky could screech, say the fulmars –
since the sea was a puddle, say the puffins
(though no one trusts their bright-beaked stories).
The slope where we landed was quieter,
with cattle chewing like centuries ago,
but under the gorse lay other Australians
that bounded away and out of sight:
wallabies with tails pumping like crank handles,
descendants of zoo exiles in the eighties
thriving in this new but old home of mine.
QUIET ANSWERS
There was once a language for Ireland’s forests,
simple but unusual like the life of plants,
without the glottal axe sounds we use today
to describe the empty hills that remain.
That language almost vanished with the trees,
marked for cutting along with the trunks
and nearly lost in the crash of felling,
but now returns as vital oxygen.
Published in Seventh Quarry
S.C. Flynn 