Postcard from the Celtic Dreamtime

The storm that has held for four days
 Has blown itself out
 And the wheels of the world
 Have begun again to turn
 ♪
 From my window
 I watch far waves crashing on the bay
 White spray against black sea
 Distance compressing their dance into slow motion
 On the Clare coast
 I see silver rounded hills with scarped terraces
 A Martello tower, a ruined fort
 Four, maybe five headlands fading south
 While westwards, the Aran Islands wait for me
 Dark smoke like shadows on the horizon
 ♪
 Pantheons of clouds move
 Across the Atlantic sky like ships
 White galleons
 Chariots or cavalcade of noble kingpins
 And patient lofty queens
 Slow procession of old gods passing by
 ♪
 Below my house
 Kaleidoscope of stone walls and huddled rooftops
 Small haphazard fields, wild, untended
 A witch-faced woman walking cows uphill
 Whacking their arses with a long branch
 Suddenly smiling when she sees me
 Her rough arm waving
 ♪
 The clammer of voices in my mind
 The woman who wonders about me
 The men who want me to deliver their dreams has faded
 I could almost no longer hear them
 ♪
 The storm that has howled for four days
 Has blown itself out
 Nothing disturbs the calm
 But the rattle of my typewriter
 I stop
 ♪
 In the silence
 The ever present past
 And the ever passing present
 Blend with the landscape to make a flavored immensity
 An atmosphere so strong
 That when I step outside
 I feel it beat against my skin
 And cluster headily 'round me
 As I walk through it
 As I breathe it
 As I become it