Mostly blue

What a day! Three hours walking the Carn Ingli ridgeway route there and back under a skyful of cirrus and cumulus clouds whose shifting shapes against the blue were evanescently entertaining. Sheep paths wind and weave  between  stone heaps and solitary boulders that nurture lichen gardens in their crevices. Only one  patch of cremated remains seen  at the top this time (please people , tuck your loved ones among the rocks not underfoot.)



SKY WOMAN
She walks the sky, and combs the clouds for stars
Where there are none, because she’s always yearned
For things that lie behind the things that are.
She loves to feel the earth, to walk the paths
Her people walk. But she was also born
To walk the sky and comb the clouds for stars.
A harebell’s chime, a rowan’s sudden flare,
She reads as signals that it’s time to turn
Towards paths that lie beneath the paths that are.
The villagers have mapped the paths that mark
The routes for trade. Now only she discerns
The skyward paths that comb the clouds for stars.
She knows by heart the heavy laws they’ve carved
Deep into stone slabs. But she has also learned
The law that came before the laws that are.
And secretly she hoards an ancient shard
Of law inscribed upon a shattered urn:
Go walk the sky, go comb the clouds for stars,
And seek what lies beyond the things that are.

Paddy Bushe

(An Irish poet I haven't come across before. The original was broken up into verses but I preferred it in this form. The poem seemed to speak for me.)