Camino

Ghost leaved poplars flicker

lighten my step

their jigsaw bark seeps with story

connective tissues and my muscles remember

In walking we shed old stories

don’t even have to try

every beat drop in a little more

bits fall onto the road

gold wheat horizon and blood red poppies

hold the answers

Old demons raise up to test us

see if we’re willing to say goodbye

to the furrowed brows and wrinkled thoughts

time to sing out the sad lines

I imagine

what this place was like before us

if it was always rich and strange

would the sky still be sliced

with swallows and pinches of light

Evening settles into a blustery stretch of fire

a swirl of me and fifty mountains

the felling of the beginning

the deliciousness of the moment

before the path owns you

About the Author:  Aoife Reilly lives in a wooden cabin in the countryside on the shores of Lough Corrib in Galway on the west coast of Ireland. Aoife grew up in a rural area in the midlands called Laois. She has been dabbling in poetry since she was 10. Over the last few years, nature connection through the lodges, moontime teachings and a love of her land has felt its expression through poems. Aoife started coming to the lodges 9 years ago and its been a sustaining feature in her life ever since.