I had a dream about a man mourning near castle ruins on the shores of an icy sea. His love of many years had suddenly left him, with no explanation that he could understand. He was just standing there in that cold wind, shell shocked, with tears silently streaming down his face. He called the place Gleninagh Mor, and when I woke I wrote this poem to capture the feeling of the dream. It was only later that I looked up the name and found to my great surprise that it’s an actual place.
It’s probably nothing, but who knows? Maybe there was a man on the shores that day while I was dreaming. Maybe his sorrow reached me somehow, and called me to stand as witness to his grief, to be a brother to him in that moment, though he will never know my name, nor I his.
GLENINAGH MOR
by Michael D. Warden
I suppose
it was the way
the pale light
fell across my scar
on the shores of Connemara
on that late afternoon
Or the way
the smell of
salty brine
lingered on my skin
after my thousand baptisms
in those icy seas.
Or maybe
it was the way
my smile could never be
as whole hearted
as I tried to make it for you.
The wind lays curses
on my back
from Gleninagh Mor
and over the sleeping castle
I hear the gulls calling out
their liturgy
of my shattered sins.
I wonder which of these
made you leave,
which convinced you
to tear apart
the gossamer threads
of our long-stretched bonds
and disappear
over the barren hills,
leaving no trace
of your soul
ever being here.
There’s nothing here
now.
Nothing.
Just
the memory
of the fading slap
of your footsteps
on wet limestone.
