Meditation at Athenry

Athenry, sitting on chairs in a circle,
The grass is wet.
Listening to the distant sounds,
Traffic, a digger, some rooks.
And then moving in closer,
Though my ear is motionless,
To hear the trees move,
The sun touching us makes
The small fountain rise and splash,
A passing bee is cosmic.

Consciousness grows wide
Rests in the low, level fields
Too green perhaps,
Certainly not spectacular
But then our eyes are closed,
As coming down to rest
On carboniferous rock,
Its name denoting time not content,
We cannot conceive it.
The unimaginable time past
When all this vast space was
Shallow sea.

And further,
Further than swallows fly south
It lay warm and redolent
Before sex was, our cells experimented
Shoulder to shoulder merging forms,
Emerging to becoming one or two
Or three or four better even than we can.
And died there, layer on chalky layer.
Until we sit now on their limestone
Monument.

And later when we dig manure
Into the shallow earth that covers it
The fossiled smell of ancient sea
Reminds me of my origin.