“If you want to learn what someone fears losing, watch what they photograph.” ~ Unknown

Here. My spirit is here. My body needs to be here.

“Kindred headlands called The Three Sisters look to sea near Smerwick on the Dingle Peninsula. For the ambitious, country lanes lead past sheep paddocks to cities already bursting with job seekers.”—From “Ireland On Fast-Forward,” September 1994, National Geographic magazine

Photograph by Sam Abell

                    

From a Country Overlooked

There are no creatures you cannot love.
A frog calling at God
From the moon-filled ditch
As you stand on the country road in the June night.
The sound is enough to make the stars weep
With happiness.
In the morning the landscape green
Is lifted off the ground by the scent of grass.
The day is carried across its hours
Without any effort by the shining insects
That are living their secret lives.
The space between the prairie horizons
Makes us ache with its beauty.
Cottonwood leaves click in an ancient tongue
To the farthest cold dark in the universe.
The cottonwood also talks to you
Of breeze and speckled sunlight.
You are at home in these
great empty places
along with red-wing blackbirds and sloughs.
You are comfortable in this spot
so full of grace and being
that it sparkles like jewels
spilled on water.

~ Tom Hennen

All images found on the National Geographic site.

Music by Martina McBride and The Chieftains, “I’ll Be All Smiles Tonight”

Another video, this one of the country itself: Ireland: Flying through the country, by Liam Ó Brádaigh

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