Thank you so much to Poet and Educator Maura Johnson for leading us in a creative exploration on the Saturday morning at the recent Gathering at the Seamus Heaney Homeplace in Bellaghy. The Theme was “Water Is Life”. Some of the beautiful creative people there have kindly agreed to share their compositions with us all below. Fabulous.
I am one with Water
by Jennie Sze
Water is inside me
I feel the water as there are bubbles
Small bursts of gas bubbling inside the water
The tingling sensation inside all areas of my body
Bubbling, letting me know I am alive.
I’m flowing in a current of life.
I’m flowing, flowing down a river
Water is all around me
Carrying me as I float above the surface
Facing the sky, seeing the clouds in the sky
Patches of water in the sky,
Reflecting on the surface of the water below
Like a mirror showing their friends up there
What we see down here
The river up in the sky smiling at the river below
Both moving by an invisible current.
Life is always, constantly moving.
Above me
Below me
Within me.
There is no stopping this flow.
There is a dam that was built by humans, trying to slow the flow of the current
There is energy blocks in my body, trying to make known something that needs a release.
How comforting it is when the dam is released
All the pressure rushing out downstream
Back into the river it has always been.
I am a river
I am a cloud
I see my reflection in my friend.
Like a dam
The clouds release rain or downpours depending on the pressure contained.
I am a river
I am a cloud
I hold pressure inside the water within me.
I seek release, relief, reprieve
I want to re-enter the flow that I was never really ever away from.
But I seek this union
This surrender feeling of oneness
Of peace
Of unity
Tears, sometimes tears need to flow
From inside to the outside
To feel cleansed once again.
This writing is inspired by Coleraine River.
The edge of the Island. Tir fo Thuinn
– by Narayan O’Tuathalain
I am at the edge of this Island
Water rushes up through the passage
Slapping the rock in churning white foam
The ground here is older than water’s memory
I step as close to the drop as I dare
As three seagulls call back and forth
Talking to seagulls under the sea
I only see a gigantic, prehistoric rock
As I slip down the grassy bank
Near sliding into an underworld
Of foaming water, chronometic waves
As I find my feet I look over
Would I survive down there, Tir fo Thuinn
Climb out of the watery cave, find a footfall on rock
The mother rock of this Island
But only the wing’ed ones will ever walk there
This writing is inspired by the headland of Banba’s crown at Cionn Mhalanna (Malin Head)
Water Is Life
– by Rosaline Callaghan
We gathered at this place beneath the summit of Sliabh Liag. Angry gusts tossed our hair and carried our incantations over the Atlantic, where they swooped over troughs and crests, kittiwake and a circling pair of peregrine falcons.
We paid homage and beseeched the waters of the wellspring to keep our sailing menfolk safe – to cut a boat path through the roiling ocean – and bring them home again.
We gathered at the Well of the Fair Winds, before the old ways shorn and scattered, before beehive huts and transubstantiation of sacred springs to holy wells.
An Bhanna
– by Mary McGuiggan
Panic, Anger, Fear
The oak barrel, black and silver
Overflowing, gushing
Rain water from my shed roof.
How dare they!
How dare you pollute my waters
Birds chittering from roof top to roof top
From beech to oak, hawthorn to elder.
Danger:
Suffocating slurry, toxic dumping,
flooded river banks, sodden grass, parched hedgerows,
Withered plants, mud laden lanes, poisoned rivers.
How dare they!!
How dare you pollute my lands.
An Bhanna,
The Godess, the shining Bann
Bereft,
Overwhelmed, overflowing, oversight.
Her life ebbing.
The Flough, the spongy, wet bog, alive with fluffy bogcotton
White bristle like seed heads
Smiling in the breeze, healing properties, indicator of hazard.
Stacking the turf, spongy and wet.
Soggy sandwiches, sunburned necks,
Overbrewed tea.
Stories and laughter.
Recordings
Sea Swimming
– by Veronica
Paddleboard Yoga
– by Conall
Water – The Mighty Notwani
– by Les Gornall
