The Tuesday Poem: The Dragons and Archangels of Skellig Michael

For Marie Heaney

We knew the race was coming from Galway

And had seen the sails high out to windward,

But a sharp northwesterly had edged us away

To the sheltered road between the lighthouses.

And so it was that Seal Cove all at once

Held its breath when that emblazoned sail,

Familiar from the otherworld of television,

Flared out of the west, waking the sunset.

Here was a presence wonderful beyond belief:

Here was a communion, a congregation,

As if the Archangel Michael had abandoned

His solitary, high-peaked wrestling with monsters

For the time being, to descend and watch

That slanting, billowing exuberance burst

Into and out of our vision, to hear your daughter

In your excited phone speak from afar

And invoke the blessing of the Green Dragon

On all of us, on the guides high as kites,

On the beaming lighthouse men, on the twilight

Replete with a grace proper to archangels.

Paddy Bushe was born in Dublin and now lives in Waterville, Co Kerry. He writes in both Irish and English, and has published eight collections of poetry, the most recent of which is To Ring in Silence: New and Selected Poems (Dedalus 2008). He is a member of Aosdána.