for Lynda and Susan

Into the forest by the loch past larch and birch
crowns heading each other for space,
I walked the faint boreen in. Far in and west.
You won’t find it. And you’ll think me a liar.

Among women, those unseen in white robes,
young, their soft steps upon the bog
falling into old layered trees,
ancient moments of love and grief

a thousand years of it.
There rose no sound other,
no mist, and the sky was eye-blue,
unmarked, unscratched by rainbow.

Among banked leaves and crowding gorse,
circle barely visible, whitethorn arching
over one end, I came for the healing.
For Brigid, for beyond, beyond words and poetry,

for the life of my friend in her white ward.
Another came with me, the painter, my friend,
to make sure I came back, was not lost,
to hold me back from their whispers, their calling.

She came in silence and we spoke no words.
There was a faint hum as if a slow burble of
candles were scything the air,
forest suspended and breathless.

Thick ragged hedges surrounded the circle
and only one block had cluttered itself in
where I waited and asked for entrance.
Stepping carefully I went to the flat raised

dolmen off-centre, where the old hawthorn’s arm
reached over, an arch of shelter, an arch of age.
Kneeling, I had the question for my friend the poet
in the ward, hoping: let her live, spare her,

guide me to what healing can I do to keep her
here, and the answer came, but inner quietly:
too late, it is her time, she is already in passage,
processing slowly, she is already on her path here.

Eyes closed, still the light behind them
was blue and raising my open hands in supplication
I asked for a sign if petition at least had been heard
and upon my inner right thumb fell a crystal drop

as if a heaven’s tear, though no rain was there.
And I licked it grateful, ignorant, and with a
sense of that loved life ebbing up wards,
I stepped back out, and pulled away.

Did you hear those big horses! my friend gasped?
did you feel that huge wind, rushing? No. Nothing.
But they were wild, racing; a seal-gray, a black, a sorrel,
But here are only Connemara ponies, I said.

In the hospital next day, my sick friend in her
wheelchair smiled soft as a lilt, surrounded,
held in a sea-blue haze shimmering, a blue haze,
no mistake; and her face shining in our iris-gold.

I went again, foolishly alone, still hopeful.
Only old crones followed and led me in,
noisy grumbling in their tunnelled throats,
and the circle was dark and frightening.

Shivering, no amount of sun could warm me.
Their faces to me were cragged and etched
as if the young before had earned a mighty aging and
dark robes were on them. Fearful I backed my steps out.

I never went again. It was finished for me.
These decades later, on my bedroom wall, it hangs –
the painting – jagged white greys, part abstract.
No one can see what that is, but we two who know.

Her witness. The stone circle. My bright fuchsia
sweater within, my artist friend’s white shirt without,
and those wild horses flinging themselves
round and round and round.

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Robyn Rowland is an Irish-Australian citizen, living between Ireland and Victoria for over 36 years, and working in Turkey since 2000, Robyn lives in regional Victoria. In December 2019 – March 2022 she was back living in Australia, caring for her father who died at 102. Her most recent book is Steep Curve (Five Islands Press, 2024). She has 12 books of poetry, including 2 bilingual Turkish/English: Under This Saffron Sun – Safran Güneşin Altında, (Knocknarone Press, Ireland 2019) and This Intimate War Gallipoli/Çanakkale 1915 – İçli Dışlı Bir Savaş: Gelibolu/Çanakkale 1915 (FIP, 2015; repub. Spinifex Press, Australia, 2018). She has won or been listed for various prizes e.g. Myslexia, ACU Poetry Prize, the Peter Porter Poetry Prize, Antipodes: Journal of Australian and New Zealand Literature International Poetry prize. Her poetry appears in national/international journals in 9 countries, over forty-five anthologies, eight editions of Best Australian Poems (Black Inc). She has read in India, Portugal, Ireland, UK, USA, Greece, Austria, Bosnia, Serbia, Turkey and Italy, and is published in translation. She has also been filmed reading in National Irish Poetry Reading Archive, James Joyce Library, UCD,