Downey James

James Downey- Second Place Winner - Adults: Poetry
Cornwall Public Library 2015 Annual Writing Contest

SIXTY CENTURIES
(A Conversation at a Neolithic Court Tomb in the Malinmore Valley, Donegal)
Who are you, blood of my blood?
What do you feel standing beside me across sixty centuries?
Stone walls, floors and stone sentinels soaked with your sweat and tears,
Currents of your life force eddying around me, over me and through me.
A sea of grain rippling before me in the breeze
Flying wedges of stone and the creeping bog
Amid thousands of years yet to come.
Ta aithne agam fut fos - Yet I know of you.
Do you see my face in your dreams?
My footsteps silently sink into the moss covering your courtyard
Tangy salt on the sea winds, the mist and the blazing sun
Caress our faces as we walk together through veils of time.
Precisely laid stone, unmoving, unchanging through millennia
Roughen our hands as we pass through your ancient hallways.
Delicate microliths, bronze tipped spears, black swords in iron,
gold spirals and knots, woven cloaks worn by centurions, spires and
pillars of stone, time enshrined in poem and song
Legends of kings, saints, gods, and heroes ... and ourselves
Your future, my past, joined in us.

Let those living in the moment, the real world
Feet firmly planted, facing forward
Criticize, even mock us in our dream time
Yet wonder about us, and our presence through eons.
Cinnte, ta beannacht orainn, anseo, inar ait coisricthe le cheile -
Truly, we are blessed, here, in our sacred space together.