Rhona Greene

My grandmother tells me whispers:

            ‘Fadó, fadó, far away, far below. Éistigí, eistigí. Listen.'

O shimmering sun. O breath of life. Still. Life. Still. Breathing. Below, below. Fadó, fadó. Kings, queens, gods, goddesses, preparing, turning, positioning crowns to glitter, to glow, tilting glinting halos light caught dark to shine between flicker and flow, flaming unborn visions to flight, crowning spinning heads brim full to dreaming, deep in the majesty of time.

            ‘Éistigí.' Shimmering sun. Breathing life. Below. ‘Fadó, fadó’.

She whispers: ‘Tar liom’. I follow. 

Up one grassy mound to another, then another, little giddy goat galloping up, rolling down, skipping, squealing, spinning round and round and round. Knowing nothing of time – yet, but to follow the sun following me in cartwheeling revolutions of joy and its grip soft, green, underfoot, holding me here, holding me now and O how it fills a throbbing heart to burst spilling over with bird songs of joy and sparkling wide-eyed wonder. 

                        Eyes open. Sun. Eyes Close. Wait. Open. Sun. 

                        Bright. Shadow. Bright. Shadow.

                        Close. Cover eyes. Splay fingers. 

                        Filter. Flicker. Filter. Flicker.

                        Shimmer – Shimmer – Shimmer. 

                        Glimpse. Vision. Dream. 

                        Whispering whispers. 

                        'Tar Liom. Tar liom.' Follow the sun.

Up ahead, my grandmother billows in floral skirts leading the way beyond here, beyond now, gathering me – ribbons and bows – in ripples, in flow. When the powder puff cloud of her passes on through the yawning gap and disappears, everything slows. My spinning head. My thumping heart. My every motion winds down to stop and I turn to stone – to this chiselled moment tracing rhythms throbbing to touch. There is no name for this. This day of light and shade, cloud and revelation, forever and now humming, thrumming, trembling stone, coiling and uncoiling the spiral of me, of everyone on this trail. 'Ciúnas, le de thoill.' Quiet, please. The stone is singing. 

I spiral on to the rippling melody of touchstone, following my grandmother’s dusty footprints laid down before me as softly as snow on snow – a faint trail leading toward a mound. The Mound! O how it looms, blooms, blossoms and grows on approach and I, all shrinky Alicey, my heart full of wonder, bending and folding like a butterfly, crouch down and pass on through the low portal of time, entering a long dark narrow passage, becoming one more tiny dimple in the continuum. 

Squinty blinking into the vast unknown shape-shifting familiars appearing and vanishing between icy breaths, O so shivery cold to the bone, stirring the primal tendrils of instinct to search, reach, touch, intertwining ribboning strands binding, briefly. We connect, reunite and persist in this heart of darkness where shadow dust sprinkles tangled souls into cradles rocked by rhythm and scattered bones, where time bleeds in sun and echoes, where I feel flow.

Silently, we seep into sacred chambers, swelling with life in the slip between flesh and bone, where blood pools, warms to touch in anticipation of a promise, a spark. 

Hearts beat, beat, beat, pounding hard, fast, loud, throbbing rhythm’s ancient pulse, then slowly, gently down, synchronise to quivering harmony and grace notes, time’s simple signature, and O how we hang in this hallowed place oscillating, unknowing, hoping for the untangling of everything so barely contained.

Clinging on in unspangled enfolding black ribbons of fragile awakening unravelling, flinging against the entangled dark whispering:

            ‘Oh Nana. What do I do now Nana? What do I do now?’

Her sweet voice comes calling, softly, again and again.

  

            ‘Mo chuisle, a chuisle mo chroí.'

Tilt your shattered head skyward, and wait for light to return.