(after the photography of Martin Jakubik)

This might be Charon's fateful keel
aground on Lough na Fuaiche's strand

and Midas must have touched this field
around the church at Ballyfanagh.

Beams laid bare by Rosbeigh's tides
allow us form a tragic tale,

these trees at Monasterevin sigh
faint echoes of St Eimhin's bell.

We give to every cairn its myth,
its legend every cromlech, lios-

but long before we entered time,
before we built at Poulnabrone

these waters mirrored primal skies,
split rivered fissures out of stone.

Eamonn Lynskey is the author of Dispatches & Recollections (Lapwing, 1998) and And Suddenly the Sun Again (Seven Towers, 2010). His third collection, It’s Time, is due from Salmon later this year