The Man from the Bogs Commission
liked to amuse his wife with stories
of the peasants he met in the midlands;
friendly to a fault, he writes, often witty
but sadly illiterate. Their affection
for frothy swathes of bog cotton
is quaint, and the names they give it
shows a puzzling reverence for a plant
of little importance: ceannbhán,
bog-silk, bed feathers, cotton-sedge,
rush cotton, cotton balls, meadow wool.
For two guineas a day he must map
the King’s wasted acres,
every settlement, turf bank and track,
every driblet and waterway.
The bog resisted, led him
into a wilderness of mist and rain.
The day he sank to his waist
it swallowed his good boots,
notebook and walking stick.
He learned to read the land
by colour: not to tread
on lime-green moss,
but to let yellow anthers
of deergrass and pink-purple
clusters of heather
guide him to drier ground.
Curlew burbled, snipe
winnowed moonlit nights
and in the reedbeds at dawn
a coot sounded an alarm.
* The British parliament established The Commission on Bogs in 1809 to survey Irish bogs and advise on draining them for cultivation.
of the peasants he met in the midlands;
friendly to a fault, he writes, often witty
but sadly illiterate. Their affection
for frothy swathes of bog cotton
is quaint, and the names they give it
shows a puzzling reverence for a plant
of little importance: ceannbhán,
bog-silk, bed feathers, cotton-sedge,
rush cotton, cotton balls, meadow wool.
For two guineas a day he must map
the King’s wasted acres,
every settlement, turf bank and track,
every driblet and waterway.
The bog resisted, led him
into a wilderness of mist and rain.
The day he sank to his waist
it swallowed his good boots,
notebook and walking stick.
He learned to read the land
by colour: not to tread
on lime-green moss,
but to let yellow anthers
of deergrass and pink-purple
clusters of heather
guide him to drier ground.
Curlew burbled, snipe
winnowed moonlit nights
and in the reedbeds at dawn
a coot sounded an alarm.
* The British parliament established The Commission on Bogs in 1809 to survey Irish bogs and advise on draining them for cultivation.
Rooks
i.m. Mildred Anne Butler (1858 – 1941)
It began in the base of her thumb,
a stiffness she blamed on the rain,
then swelling in one knuckle
crept to another, and overnight
from her left hand to the right.
She shook and flexed her fingers,
crushed ginger root for a compress
and painted on through the pain.
Friends sent prescriptions:
sip willow-bark tea, brush
your hands with nettles, thrust
them into a swarm of bees.
Seated at her easel, she jabbed
a brush from palette to canvas,
having bid her sister
strap it between fingers
grown clenched as talons
grasping prey.
After she gave in,
she’d shuffle into the orchard
for the rooks churning
amidst bare winter branches,
the ruckus they raised,
their pitch-black sheen.
It began in the base of her thumb,
a stiffness she blamed on the rain,
then swelling in one knuckle
crept to another, and overnight
from her left hand to the right.
She shook and flexed her fingers,
crushed ginger root for a compress
and painted on through the pain.
Friends sent prescriptions:
sip willow-bark tea, brush
your hands with nettles, thrust
them into a swarm of bees.
Seated at her easel, she jabbed
a brush from palette to canvas,
having bid her sister
strap it between fingers
grown clenched as talons
grasping prey.
After she gave in,
she’d shuffle into the orchard
for the rooks churning
amidst bare winter branches,
the ruckus they raised,
their pitch-black sheen.
|
Irish poet Jane Clarke has published three collections with Bloodaxe Books: The River (2015), When the Tree Falls (2019), and A Change in the Air (2023). She edited Windfall: Irish Nature Poems to Inspire and Connect (Hachette Books Ireland, 2023) and co-authored The Hare’s Corner: Making Space for Nature (New Island Books, 2025). Her third collection A Change in the Air was shortlisted for the T S Eliot Prize 2023 and the Forward Prize for Best Collection 2023. Her fourth collection Coracle will be published by Bloodaxe in October 2026. Jane lives with her wife in the Wicklow uplands.
|
