To my mother in old age

August 2018 Connemara

by Meg Bateman

It’s a premonition of a time without you
to be standing on the shore of Connemara
looking at the Burren in County Clare
whose grey hills hold a memory of you
crouching down in the sunny grass
enthralled by the bright flowers of the grikes.

The stones on the beach are like white eggs,
the pale sand shifts with the tide…
I laugh out loud at a perching rock.
There’s still time, it seems to say,
despite Moher’s plunging cliffs
despite the islands floating off to the west.

Laden brambles grab at my legs
in some bitter-sweet sign
as I cross the fields up from the sea
on a rough path through browning ferns.
I struggle to find a breach in the winding dikes
back to the road where the cars roar by.