The Transparent Border

There is a strange edge to the wind today,
Some irritation with the patient strain
Of trees, the 'willing to bend with anything'
Trick of the rushes, the shoals of shadow
Perplexing the lake and all the silent
Aloofness of the stones, something
Very old, perhaps, resentment towards
These bog fields, each rooted in its dark
Continuum and known to people by name
And season, from which many stones
Have been claimed to make houses
Where they grow warm with human echoes,
And the lake, to which the mountains come
To mirror themselves, where twilights linger
Before night sends everything to rest;
A resentment at the way they all somehow
Slipped across the transparent border
From idea into individual thing,
Glistening with name, colour and form
At the beginning, when the wind would have
Felt breath was where presence lived.

--John O'Donohue