The Island Of The Last Nun
Clochán in County Clare, Ireland.
Clochain are the beehive huts that formed the homes of Celtic monastics. They are most commonly found along the south-western Irish seaboard, and most famously at Skellig Michael.
This sequence of poems is based on the meditative practices centred around a journey my spiritual mentor, Jayne Johnson, undertook for me. In this journey, I was taken to an island and instructed to meditate within a ruined clochán.
The Sound of Breath
What is that sound?
It is the sound of rivers flowing.
What is that sound?
It is the sound of the ocean tides.
What is that sound?
It is the sound of life processing towards death.
What is that sound?
It is the sound of breath.
Casting Off
Before you depart you must cast off
your golden gown - the fake persona
from the city of glass and electric lights
you wear around you like a hologram.
You must turn your ear to cries of gulls.
You must tear off your headphones
like golden earrings cast them off.
You must throw down your telephone.
All the chatter of the radio cast if off.
Forget the memories of the call centre.
To release your soul on the wings of gulls
you have got to tear out all the plugs.
Before you depart take off your watch.
In the vastness of the deep time is no longer
counted even by the sun in the windows.
Take off your gown and we will cast off.
The Island of the Last Nun
Take me
to the island
where there is room
for just one woman just one hut.
Wall me in with little windows so
I can just about see the sun.
Make them just about large enough
for the birds who will come and visit me.
Bring me gifts of food and moreover stories.
What will my unexpected visitors bring to this place?
What will they bring to my eight besotted windows?
Will they be sea birds? Eagle? Raven? Owl?
What wisdom will they speak to me?
Their riddling stories by the turning sun
I will write on animal skins with a feather pen
in the ink of squids and my own blood.
I will write a book and I will stitch it
together with sinews and when it is filled
I will cast it off into the ocean only to be read
by the tiniest of sea creatures swimming
with polyps, sea anemones, corals,
to float to the North Atlantic Gyre
where unlike microplastics,
like me it will break down and be gone,
living on only as a memory
beyond the sea, beyond the sun.
Contemplating Ruins
I see nothing but the ruins of a clochán.
Stand here and see it rebuilt pebble
by pebble, corbel stone by corbel stone
knowing time does not work in lines but circles;
circles of stone, circles of windows, circles of sun.
Even in the ruins when the sun does not shine
and the storm rages we can find hope.
So long as the birds cry and stories
sing and the sound of breath
breaks on the coast.
Lorna Smithers
Lorna is a polytheist author and nun based in Penwortham, Lancashire, north-west England. Her three books: Enchanting the Shadowlands, The Broken Cauldron, and Gatherer of Souls are published by Ritona Press. She blogs here - https://lornasmithers.com