Achill 1972
By Cróna Gallagher

On Winter nights such as this
When iced air is cold as glass 
and the blood of the sky a dark galactic ink, 
you would take us outside in our bare feet,
point north to the heavens, and instruct.

We used whale bones for stools 
as you hedge row taught, pin pointed the stars,
gave co-ordinates, latitudes and meridians
the mapping terms from lost shipwrecks 
that lie still under rock studded seas.

We turned our faces like satellites, up
to find the warrior, to build it up from dots 
until a giant of a man with rapier and holster 
stood firm in Hibernian firmament.

Rivets and bolts formed an iron- age plough.
we would find the archaeological remains
and dig it out of the dark so it could turn once more 
the sods of night sky and a dash of startled milky way 
was flung across the blackness
as seeds thrown from a sack.

Then we’d stand in our pyjamas to go inside,
one of us slightly taller than the other, slightly older
another, slightly smaller and younger and another again.
This human staircase stepping up towards your lofty world
and you, the rudder on our round blue planet
turning our cosmos, turning every tide.