Scattered boulders pepper
the land, granite hills mimic
abandoned shields, treeless
and barren under a mouldering
sky, heaps sloping blindly
down to the vacuous, uncaring
Irish sea a century after the emigration
of an occupied nation.
Squinting into a pale setting sun,
I make out shapes of some lonely
dwellings, half-standing ruins
yawning into the murky sky.
Falling away toward the shore,
a spate of broken stone walls
reveal open doorways, sightless
windows and bare dirt floors,
each set apart from its neighbors
by a barely-there path.
Thatch long gone, no furnishings
in sight, the only signs of one-time
habitation are wrecked fireplaces
and the occasional rusted tool left
among the scattered boulders.
first published in The Rockford Review
also published in Illinois State Poetry Society
©2016 Bonnie Manion