Walking with the Eagle

For the NaPoWriMo prompt. A family memory, not funny, not dark, just sad.

Strangely enough, one of the paintings by Fay Collins Sarah suggests as a prompt for dverse this evening  is very apt. At the end of the poem is a photograph of Croagh Patrick.

 

She walked lonely paths, my grandma,

diminutive bundle of nerves,

with her burden of tragedies.

She travelled often and always alone,

not even her ghosts to take her arm

for she believed in none of it.

She climbed Croagh Patrick often enough,

beneath the Mayo sky, above the restless ocean,

but not for Patrick.

What had the dour bishop ever done for her or hers?

She walked with Crom, the Eagle and the mountain stone,

and found peace of sorts with that raw, wild presence

the monk tried so hard to shift

with his fasting and his muttering.

She found a sort of solace

in the ceaseless heaving of the waves,

the trackless breadth of the cloudy sky.

I feel her tears still, though I never saw her cry;

I was born with them in my blood,

will carry them in its tide until I die.

 

Photo©Störfix