We celebrated (if thats the right word) my sister Sheila's first anniversary on Sunday last, January 18, 2009, in Sligo, and Joe her husband did us, and Sheila proud. There was a fair scattering, if that's the right term, of her diverse friends there, indeed they came from all over and we all enjoyed the occasion, albeit that it had to be sad to be real, and despite the levity and the conviviality, it was indeed sad. The melting snow glistened down Ben Bulben's face reflecting our tears as we paid our respects to Sheila at the quiet hillside cemetary in Rosses Point, with only the calling of the curlews and seabirds in the long grass of the dunes and rythmic dunta of the atlantic waves on her favourite beach as accompanyment to our soft prayers. The crispness of the air made the fresh, blooming flowers all the more poignant on her grave. Sheila, our rose, is gone but never forgotten, especially with family and friends remembering her constantly as they do, visiting with her year round in her little spot overlooking the Rosses and Sligo Bay.
Co-incidentally, just last Friday, on a similarly frosty morning, I found a dead Curlew on my doorstep in Barna. I opened the front door and there it was, on my doorstep, cold and stiff, yet dignified and proud, noble I suppose. It surprised me, the arbitrary oddness of finding it there in the first place, not on the grass, not on the driveway, on my doorstep. Not just the stark finality, but also the beauty of this very private bird, that I'd often heard, glimpsed, though never actually seen, the long curved beak and the extraordinary rich, though muted, understated, ordinary-looking brown plumage, and the realisation of the mystery of the bird, dead now, no longer the living spirit of the bog and hills round my house, overlooking Galway bay and the Burren, gone, but not gone, still living, replaced by another curlew, and then another, as nature continues the cycle of life.
And later, having buried the dead bird in the bog behind my house, I thought of Sheila and of her own love of nature, her understanding of it, her derived wisdom, her faith and her spirit, now at peace on the little isthmus of Rosses Point, nestled between Ben Bulben and Knocknarea, her haven of mystery and spirituality, and now eternity, punctuated by the plaintive cry of the curlew from the dunes.
Yeats, no stranger to Rosses Point, wrote 'O Curlew cry no more in the air, or only to the waters in the West...', but that is too sad, so instead, I thought I would share this beautiful and reassuring piece from the American poet, Robert Frost. Frost was so in touch with nature, the cycles and the nuances of it and he wrote this beautiful piece about his wife, after she had died, and how her voice was now part of the symphony of birdsong, in that he subscribed to the the theory that birds are believed to absorb some subleties of what they hear and incorporate a minute part of that into their own vocabulary, or repertoire. I like to think of Sheila's spirit being incorporated in our own wild birds' song or in the beauty of the bog cotton, or the movement of the winds that blows constantly on the western shores of Ireland, for I sense her here, on occasions, unbidden, welcomed always.
Never Again Would Bird's Song Be the Same
He would declare and could himself believe
That the birds there in all the garden round
From having heard the daylong voice of Eve
Had added to their own an oversound,
Her tone of meaning but without the words.
Admittedly an eloquence so soft
Could only have had an influence on birds
When call or laughter carried it aloft.
Be that as may be, she was in their song.
Moreover her voice upon their voices crossed
Had now persisted in the woods so long
That probably it never would be lost.
Never again would birds' song be the same.
And to do that to birds was why she came.
Robert Frost
Apropos, given the day that was in it... and then the next day watching Obama's inauguration as 44th President it is perhaps a timely coincidence...Frost was 86 when he spoke and performed a reading of his poetry at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy on January 20th, 1961. He died 2 years later on January 29th, 1963.
Co-incidentally, just last Friday, on a similarly frosty morning, I found a dead Curlew on my doorstep in Barna. I opened the front door and there it was, on my doorstep, cold and stiff, yet dignified and proud, noble I suppose. It surprised me, the arbitrary oddness of finding it there in the first place, not on the grass, not on the driveway, on my doorstep. Not just the stark finality, but also the beauty of this very private bird, that I'd often heard, glimpsed, though never actually seen, the long curved beak and the extraordinary rich, though muted, understated, ordinary-looking brown plumage, and the realisation of the mystery of the bird, dead now, no longer the living spirit of the bog and hills round my house, overlooking Galway bay and the Burren, gone, but not gone, still living, replaced by another curlew, and then another, as nature continues the cycle of life.
And later, having buried the dead bird in the bog behind my house, I thought of Sheila and of her own love of nature, her understanding of it, her derived wisdom, her faith and her spirit, now at peace on the little isthmus of Rosses Point, nestled between Ben Bulben and Knocknarea, her haven of mystery and spirituality, and now eternity, punctuated by the plaintive cry of the curlew from the dunes.
Yeats, no stranger to Rosses Point, wrote 'O Curlew cry no more in the air, or only to the waters in the West...', but that is too sad, so instead, I thought I would share this beautiful and reassuring piece from the American poet, Robert Frost. Frost was so in touch with nature, the cycles and the nuances of it and he wrote this beautiful piece about his wife, after she had died, and how her voice was now part of the symphony of birdsong, in that he subscribed to the the theory that birds are believed to absorb some subleties of what they hear and incorporate a minute part of that into their own vocabulary, or repertoire. I like to think of Sheila's spirit being incorporated in our own wild birds' song or in the beauty of the bog cotton, or the movement of the winds that blows constantly on the western shores of Ireland, for I sense her here, on occasions, unbidden, welcomed always.
Never Again Would Bird's Song Be the Same
He would declare and could himself believe
That the birds there in all the garden round
From having heard the daylong voice of Eve
Had added to their own an oversound,
Her tone of meaning but without the words.
Admittedly an eloquence so soft
Could only have had an influence on birds
When call or laughter carried it aloft.
Be that as may be, she was in their song.
Moreover her voice upon their voices crossed
Had now persisted in the woods so long
That probably it never would be lost.
Never again would birds' song be the same.
And to do that to birds was why she came.
Robert Frost
Apropos, given the day that was in it... and then the next day watching Obama's inauguration as 44th President it is perhaps a timely coincidence...Frost was 86 when he spoke and performed a reading of his poetry at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy on January 20th, 1961. He died 2 years later on January 29th, 1963.
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God rest her.She was one of my childhood crushes.
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