The Ocean Wind

Through its mouth at Gleann Corrain, the rising
Ocean can see into Fermoyle valley
That never moves from the absence opened
By the cut of its glacier parent.
With wind the ocean bends each lone blackthorn
To a dark sickle facing the mountain.

The wind would like to breathe its crystal breath
Into the mind of the mountain's darkness
And riddle the certainty of its stone;
It lashes the cliffs with doubt, its sand lips
Deepen the question each crevice opens
And sow hoards of fern seed in the scailps.

There is no satisfaction for the wind.
To blow through doors and windows of ruins
Only reminds it how empty it is.
Above Caherbeanna's ruined village
The wind waits all year for the Garrai Cle
To fill with its tribe of golden corn.

Weary from the ghost geometry of the fog
And heaping itself blindly against walls,
The wind unfolds its heart in yellow dance;
Only now in circles, spirals and waves
Of corn can the wind see itself, swift
As the glance of moonlight on breaking tide.

--John O'Donohue