Slán Abhaile

Irish for "Safe home" - used to bid someone an easy homeward journey

Home is a complicated thing.

But the land and the sea are not complicated.

Time does not move them like it does me. A brother ages, a father and mother recede. But the Land is just as I left it. The Sea does not want anything from me.

The furz and the bramble, the frog spawn and nettles. They humble me. They are so sturdy. They cling to the bog and the rock and drink up the Atlantic wind. They can do nothing but thrive here.

The cows raise their heads from the cud and observe me with comfortingly open hostility. “Leave us the fuck alone”, they glare. I live for their honesty.

Someone has filled a bucket of feed for this sheep and I think it is the most beautiful act of care and love I have ever laid eyes on. All love should be this simple.

The mountains rule so silently. They do not care what nonsense goes on within the houses below. The people can sin and rage and flounder all they want; those giants will never stoop to our level.

**

The only wisdom here is in the land and the sea. Wisdom is in the prickly furz, and the hostile cows, and the well-fed sheep and the brooding peaks.

Home is a complicated thing. I am not sure this home is mine any more.

But the land and the sea, they are mine. Still mine, after all.