From “A First Glimpse of Ireland”
on a winter evening eyes see furthest
to a hummock of mist on horizon
to a kneeling giant a U-shaped valley
glacial moraine of gravel & clay
to a knowing tide the noise of the flood
a surge of foam to cover us all
to shell-sand that slowly accumulates
in abandoned ridges of lazybeds
to a broken landscape
exposed rock avian vectors of birch
evaporating ocean a chain of islets
to meadowsweet softened by drizzle
the fossilized needles of a monkey puzzle
to coniferous patches of dark
to a herd of stars coaxed from a river
a very black thing at the edge of a sward
hazel saplings densely clustered
fertilizing strips of dried seaweed
to a rotting wolf in a field of clover
a hedgerow in winter the production of dust
to forests cleared of their greatest wood
archipelagos drowned by the melting of ice
to a crow on the brink of a cliff without wrinkle
ripples on the surface of a lake
to an outburst of fish hundreds of salmon
a fruitful harbour entered through song
Copyright © 2025 by Dylan Brennan. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on January 9, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.