I’ve never forgotten the Glen river’s  

smell on those wet Donegal days.

Its convoluted arteries drained

through bogs of purple heather,

to emerge in petrichor and painterly swirls.

 

Just boys, we traipsed its fern banks

on mizzled days with wet feet

squelching. Off balance, our eyelines

like gunsight, skimming black stones

in flat counts to the far bank.

 

Our young arms linked in a ‘slabhra beo’

under Carrick bridge as we edged back, back 

against its flaking grey abutment.

We dared to dip forward without falling.

Like young musketeers we were ‘one for all’.

 

Egged on, we grew brave, hopping 

from slick green stepping stones

in a primaeval hunt with Willow spears, 

hoping speckled brown trout might flit, 

unmasked from their river bed camouflage. 

 

Later, laid back on those fern banks,

we watched wild geese spear the blue sky. 

Those days drifted like the river below

as slowly our innocence dissolved

like paint, in the memory of water.

----

 

(slabhra beo - Irish for human chain)