We did not know it then,

we drove to the end of the world on a nameless peninsula,

a spit off the edge of Ireland, some cheap car we rented in Dublin, a stick,

we drove all day across that bumpy island with two whining kids in the backseat and angry autumn skies overhead

wondering what we’d done to ourselves and why.

We did not know it then and hardly do now,

the pearl in our discovery,

how that land and sky must look the same as it always has

with patches of light on those quiet barren hills,

the mottled rocks and moss, remains of the dead long since forgotten.

We did not know it then,

that it would stay in our hearts forever,

our memory unchanged as the place itself

though we ourselves would never be the same.

Categories: poetry, writing

Tags: poem, travel