Connemara

I stepped out of my skin at dusk in Connemara

Where bush crickets thrummed like pylons

And the lane smelled of tar and clover

What lay beneath was fragile

Not yet ready for its season

The drizzle made sore music of my nerve endings

I was beautiful to the crows as a butcher's windrow

In the vespers, I was glorious

So raw, I felt each mote

Kites beheld my glowing jellyfish brain

My heart was carmine

Radiant as a saint in a wayside shrine

I raised my arms to the sky

And the air kissed me with its stinging, worshipful mouth

I threw the skin to the wind

Sweet sack I'd tended and punished for thirty-three years

Now moths would make heaven of it

Let them come, I thought

I'm ready

Inside me, you pulsed

Single-celled

Extraordinary