Poet's Way

We walked the long 'Poet's Way' loop around the end of the Sheep's Head. Some poetic description seems appropriate...

Down below Tooreen past the ruined homestead
Stones heaped in the field corner
Years of toil clearing the land for a crop.
East at An Dangean, The Fortress - “There is no fort, we called it that as children”.
The hoarse calls of Choughs, 
Frogs croaking in the bog pools, spawning.
Along above the waves thundering on the rocks,
Salt spray hanging in the air.
Lunch at the waterfall. Three young girls taken by the sea, a century past.
Descend to the road then up and across the peninsula.
West onto the old military road
Where horses, cart wheels and soldiers’ hobnails clattered.
Sheep's wool caught on the barbed wire, bleached in the sun
Up Ballyroon Mountain, steeper, rougher, wetter, colder
To the signal tower felled by lightning, breaking the chain of alarm against the invasion that never came.
On up to the Ordnance trig point, straight lines and angles mapping the land for ownership and control, cruelly Anglicising the ancient Irish place names.
Laharandota loch below, blue as the sky.
Past the concrete lookout post, three men and a telephone keeping watch over the Atlantic for the German invasion.
Back to the beginning, 
Weary, footsore, elated.