It stands among the stone and bog
of which it is built, as though it sprouts
from the land, quarried from your people’s core.
Tempered clay, laced with animal hair and blood,
goose feathers, drams of buttermilk, seals the shell of stone,
daubed between crevices by black shawl women,
barefoot children, watched over by famine-fierce
great-grandmothers sucking white clay pipes.
Like a rib from Eve, oak is coaxed from bog land,
fashioned into rafters by men of boatman blood.
Thatch of reed or straw held together with loops
of hazel or sally – golden roofs of the dispossessed.
This is your home, Mother, where you are born.
I unearth more of you today in the landscape.
You are smaller in the shadow of snowdrops, older
in the curlew’s call, larger by your absence – a stranger.
Even the moon knows I will never stop searching.
Photo by Arun
