I walk the broken track
down to the cove where Aine swims each day,
my face hard and dry from island walking,
visitor, that I am.

I see them,
giant slug-like, at the water's edge,
and balanced on their middles,
in an asana.
Balanced between the elements,
creatures of earth and sea.

My clumsy foot breaks the silence.
Dog faces turn
to the sound of stone on stone.

Husky, old sea-dogs bark,
belly crawl their way to the waves
and slip with a dancer's grace
into the blue.

Blessed by sun,
Blessed by weather
Blessed by hospitality
Blessed by company
Blessed by bicycle
Blessed by comely saints
Blessed by bloody cranesbill
Blessed by wild strawberries
Blessed by sight of seals,
I walk the low road to Kilronan.

In Essence

If you were to bottle it -
the essence of wet Saturday morning
on the slippery dog-shit-strewn prom
of moist, grey, early Salthill

Wouldn't it be a remedy
of value for the depressed, the sick of spirit,
the sad at heart, the lost and loveless,
the feeling on waking of wishing sleep would return

If you took it and watered it down, shook it
many times and diluted again
to homeopathic proportions

Till there was nothing left measurable by science
of the misery of that grey morning
I woke without you in a shabby hostel

Looking out, in vain hope, through the rain
across the bay to Ballyvaughan,
where I thought my luck might change

A rain so persistent it soaked
the children's pictures in the boot of my car
and affected the lights

A fact I didn't know until I needed them
in the dark, on the way back to that new place
that still did not feel like home

Cold house on a hill where I live with my past,
the nightmare memories that surface slowly.
The past that helped me build the walls between us

If I took that remedy,
that bottled grey day, that pit of the stomach,
absolute rock bottom, can't get any lower essence,
do you think I could learn to live
with joy?

Bird-Woman

I sit beside you,
bird-woman,
and touch your little-claw hand.

You turn,
your eyes still beautiful,
and gaze at something I cannot see.

Stick legs lead you
on a hollow-boned stumble
down the ward.

Your bird-heart races.
You watch the sky
and clash against the glass.

Come, let me hold you.
Rest in my cupped hands
till your tiny heart is still.

Bird-mother,
Helen,
your body has adapted to the air.

When will you fly?

^

Biography

Ruth Marshall is a Scottish poet who lives in County Clare since 1986. She recently finished runner-up in the RTE Rattlebag/Dublin Writers Festival Poetry Slam.