Beara by Nessa O'Mahony

What is it about the light in southwest Kerry,
the way it tricks the eye with clouds
and fleeting sungleams, so that in an instant
grey-green sea is changed to shimmering blueness,
green-grey hills transfused with deepest purple?
This is a place of mercury,
of shifting boundaries.
Hedgerows redress winter gloom
with summer lushness.
Fuschia and Honeysuckle
twine their fragrence,
guiding roads that wind
forever seawards.
This is a place unbound by definition,
its essence the quick-silver light,
the transformations,
the taste of salt left upon the tongue,
the sharp gull-shriek slicing the ocean's roar,
the sense of something constant
at the heart of flux and fury

Nessa O’Mahony
Anglesey, North Wales