Echoes

I feel the need to offer a preamble on this one. There are times when we—I, I mean I clearly, but it is safer to say we and foster my own insecurity here upon the reader—see something, experience something, or even meet someone that acts as an Aoise, a muse. The Aoise, the otherworldly inspirer, for us could be and mean anything.

We should, then, absorb this energy as it lingers. There are clearly times I can be cynical about life, or happiness, or whatnot, but when I am not, when I have cause to no longer be, albeit for a day, an hour, or even for a minute, I want to take advantage of that. Aye, might be selfish, but hopefully in a good way.

That’s my preamble, as it were. Something has caused words that string to other words to waft through the air, and into my head. For this moment at least, I will savor it.

The lighthouse of Inishtrahull
disappeared — as memories do —
behind the misty sea
or the fog off Hy-Brasil.

“She’s an echo, sure she is.”
Banba’s Crown towering over us,
the old man and I
by our wee sheltered fire, sparks dancing at night.

“An echo,” says I.
“Aye, lad, an echo. Just a hollowed tower now.”
No people, the bustling ceased —
the light turned now by hands on distant lands.

“That’s all the ships meet nowadays,” says he.
“Just echoes of these once-beating keeps.
No new beginnings, everything marked,
every place memorized, forgotten.”

The wind became thunder,
tides lashed the craigs,
the blaze swayed still,
and there we sat.

“Is that all we meet — echoes of those from before?”
My inquiry to the old man, unlaced from meaning.
“The same eyes, the same laugh, the same touch —
and never the person themselves.”

“A reminder is not a memory, lad.
A reminder beats the heart anew —
not the old door creaking,
but a new door opening in the wind.”

“An echo is all ye’ve gotten;
a beginning is what ye be needin’.
Not the same road with different eyes, lad,
but a new soul altogether —
a new light calling ye home.”