Irish Skies, Soliciting The Soul’s Response

Written while gazing out the window of a bus journeying from Northern Ireland, where we have just spent three days, to Galway and Lehinch, on the west coast of Ireland, where we will spend the next ten days. 

I.

Sun glides,

glints, 

gallops across

cliffy coast 

line, shrouding

ground 

in gold, then
turns fire-

some, leaves

precipitous pillows 

of marigold, rose

lingering on high

long after its bonsoir —

these skies, so kind

 

to our wandering 

solicit response:

what if

our very lives 

became a thank you

letter written to the universe?

How might
our living

scrawl the sentences? 

Could the grammar

of a breath

elucidate our gratitude? 

Would 

we pause for punctuation? 
And what 

would be our ink?

II.

And what of mournings, when fog 

billows down, permeates pathways

with milky 

haze, as cream melts

into cups filled

by tea-soaked waters — what 

then? Is not 
the not knowing also

some kind of kindness? 

III. 

Under how many skies,

and which, 

will we etch 

out of our souls

epistles

that read 

in closing:
‘gratefully yours,’