I think all my friends are from Tir Na Nóg

For Caffy

I think all my friends are from Tir na nóg

the sideways people with a silver branch in their hands

the ones who don’t quite fit the skin they were born in

sitting on the edge of a western sea

on another planet of water

where the tea is brewed from the dew of the hazel of wisdom

And the sugar we share is the crushed bone of a dead empire.

We are looking out over to Rocklands

where the grey stones are beginning to breathe

and the moss is whispering secrets to the soles of our boots.

They are the rulebreakers

the ones who forgot how to tell the time on an iron clock

The artists who paint with the sap of the rowan tree

the outsiders with wings tucked under their thrift store coats.

I see them, and I see the Tuatha Dé Danann

drinking cold coffee and talking about the moon.

they lean back

Changelings left in the crib of the city

there to remind the concrete how to dream

carrying the health of Tír na mBeo in their marrow

while the rest of the world decays in the grey light.

An otherworldly woman stands by the jukebox, 

her skin the colour of a sloe berry in the frost.

She offers an apple from Emain Ablach

and drops a ball of thread that begins to unwind.

It rolls past the salt shakers and our wet umbrellas, 

a thin silver line cutting through the grease and the gloom.

We follow the tapestry into the steam of the kettle, 

watching the white clouds thicken and swell

until the walls of the room begin to sweat and become translucent.

The hiss of the water slows into the roar of the western sea, 

the scent of the lino turns to wet bracken and ancient rain, 

and the magic mist rises from the floorboards, 

wrapping around our ankles like a cold silk milk.

The floor does not just break

It softens into the peat of a sí.

The cellar door is a cave mouth dripping with bioluminescence

And suddenly, we are walking under the weight of the waves

crossing into Tír fo thuinn without ever getting our hair wet.

In this place, there is no sickness

Only the abundance of mag mell

the multicoloured plain of Mag Ildathach

where the joy is so thick it tastes like honey on the tongue

a joy that is a revolutionary act while the real world burns.

Far off

beyond the mist,

the skyscrapers are shedding their glass like old scales.

The destruction of the real world is a distant thunder, 

a crumbling of cardboard and debt that doesn't reach us here.

The ash of the burning banks falls like snow on the horizon, 

grey flakes drifting over the white, silver plain of Mag Findargat

but here the air is clear and smells of rowan blossom.

It is Samhain in the soul

the liminal time where the walls are made of smoke.

There is an odd freedom in this collapse

watching the tarmac turn back into a forest floor.

The complexity is a shiver of flint in the marrow.

Do we try to polish the brass of the sinking ship

Or do we plant the seeds of the world that is coming?

To make a new one, we have to let the old one die.

We have to let it become mulch,

we have to let the rot feed the violets.

It is not a tragedy to let the winter happen,

it is just the way the forest breathes.

My friends have eyes like forest floors

deep and green and full of ancient rot and new life.

I watch their hand, poked tattoos shift and crawl

ink turning into ogham scripts that bleed into their veins

their voices no longer human, but the crash of the tide

against the black rocks of Tech Duinn.

We are for peace

the heavy peace of the deep roots

the silence that follows the collapse of a cathedral

The peace of the oak tree that doesn’t ask for permission to grow

The peace of the river that swallows the sword.

We follow the thread deeper into Rocklands

past the ghosts of empires and the hollow men in suits.

We are not breaking the world

We are just remembering it

peeling back the glamour of the bank and the billboard

to find the soil that is already eating the foundations.

We are the guests of the earth

And the earth is hungry for the concrete to go.

She wants the dancers

She wants the outsiders

She wants the ones who know that Tir na nóg

is just a heartbeat away from the pavement.

We are the new world growing through the cracks

The ivy strangling the bank vault until the iron snaps.

We are the love that requires no permission from the state

The soil reclaiming the gold

The roots drinking the oil.

We are the inheritors of Tír Tairngire

where the apples never rot, and the honey never runs dry

where the only currency is the salt on our skin

and the way we look at one another in the clearing.

while the stock tickers scream into the void

and the skyscrapers become skeletons of rust

We are eating the fruit of the white, silver plain

tasting the sweetness of a world that doesn't need to be bought.

The western sea has swallowed the sirens and the static.

There is a holy quiet in the way the ivy meets the rebar

a gentle plain of mag cíuin stretching over the ruins.

We are no longer the freaks or the rulebreakers

We are just the children of the sí coming out of the mist

walking through the ribs of the old empire

until the last light of the sun hits the bull rock

And the silence is our only Queen.

We are letting the old world go

like a lead weight dropped into the trench

Following the silver branch back to the beginning.

The air is thick with the scent of pine and salt

as the earth pulls the green sheet over the face of the city.

The last skyscraper sinks into the silt

The mouth of the soil closes tight and silent

And we are finally

whimsically

home.