Writer | Podcasts | Environment
A hiding mane of a green-barked yew supports the sky; beautiful spot! the large green of an oak fronting the storm. A tree of apples - great its bounty! Like a hostel, vast: A pretty bush, thick as a fist, of tiny hazelnuts, a green mass of branches. A choice pure spring and princely water …
Continue reading "A Brief History of the Irish Environment (Episode 2)"
Celebrate saving the less charismatic Write odes to plankton, snail and flies, Our love of birds and mammals may be automatic, But we struggle to value lichen in our lives. It's harder to sing of fungi than of tigers, Hard to remember the worm in the earth, Diversity means algae as much as flowers So …
Advice for girls who wake up smelling smoke: the fire isn’t lit yet, And if they come to take you to the pyre scratch every bit of them you can get. Even executioners have eyes. I’d advise you to drink honey in the mornings to keep your voice sweet No one came when you screamed …
Continue reading "Advice for Girls Burnt as Witches in Past Lives"
Tell the bees that I have died, They used to say that if the hives weren’t told of a birth or death in the family they would leave the keeper, So there is no need to lie. Tell the bees I am no more, Bees in the house can be a sign of good luck …
I have spent so much time on war, The more time I spent singing for peace The more I became a piece of wasted fury, Maybe not wasted when anger is A fundamentally logical response to injustice, But if it’s just this then your activists will always burn out, There’s no doubt there’s cruel work …
When you walk into a psychologists office they offer you a seat a glass of water and a stupid question: how are you? Fine. How to begin? At some point I learned how to walk, younger than most, started out running my Nana tells this story about an open front door and me halfway down …
My mother says when her hands are inside the soil that is how she goes to church. It took me two decades to really understand. It took me finding my own piece of land. Five square feet of neglected backyard, but it was mine Well, it was rented and not for a particularly long time …
This is a beginning that will be repeated again and again and again. This is a story that is being retold, the same but new Beginning is the oldest thing you know how to do Again, again, again. . As messy and painful as all births are From bright light at the end of a …
Persephone’s term begins the year’s dry lament Even while nymph’s paint gold dead leaves on the cement They force the evergreens to stay to cloak Demeter’s curse. That steals their father, Hellios away to freeze a solemn earth. Light begins to fade and skin begins to chill We reap what summer made and hope …
I am abrasive. I am armed to the teeth with knives of hand and mind and fangs and quips behind these lips so it can be unwise to tell me to smile. So despite a love/hate relationship with the word I have an abrasive personality, But then I came by it honestly. I inherited it …
Orla ní Dhúill 