Rural Rhapsody

Rural Rhapsody

Courtesy of Thurles Author & Poet Tom Ryan ©

I have learned to breathe with the earth,
In search of that elusiveness,
That other and beautiful birth,
Eternal happiness.

All my gruelling travail,
The sweat and the unshed tears
Are gone now, gone to the devil,
As are my life-long fears.

In a house by the trees and the fields,
Where the crows now ravish the barley.
Where the turf smoke upward soars
And late is always early.

I have shaped new–splendid dreams
And have loved an old–new vision.
The world is not what it seems
And I have learned a lesson.

We do not see for the sweat
That blurs the sight of the eye,
Fuming, forever we fret
Blind to that inward joy.

But in a home with a turf fire burning
And a woman to love the day,
I have no inward yearning
Nor any desire for the fray.

We have but a short, sweet hour
In a thought–feeling and more,
Then fade before the power
That was timeless long before.

A power so great and so awesome.
The heart can scarce withstand
Even a breath of its presence
That I have known in this land.

Where silence is still forever
And the world is a pithy thing,
Body from soul nigh sever
And strange is everything.

Fools that we worship the earth.
‘Tis but a path to home
And so, in sadness and mirth,
Go, journey, but not alone.