Visiting Mary

I visit the place I imagine her in.
I practice walking the tall grass
to the stony house,
the bit of rock they’ve left, a candle
to mark she was there,
that someone is there to find.
I practice shutting the door in my mind,
driving straight.
It won’t matter how abandoned—
the place will be ringing with crickets.
The low, twitching haze of summer
tethered to a sloshing bell,
the sun, late,
still gathering her magic to its gate.
In Mayo, I hear the light between all things
                      is frayed.
I practice the inhale.
There’s a moment between twilight and dusk,
they call it ‘nautical’, it is,
spiritually fixed to the timing of things,
as fixed as my heart to the centre
of this visiting.
It won’t matter if no-one else sees.
She is alive,
                     in the cloth of my bones,
above her ground, arrives a steadying sense
of approval.
I practice the first breath of paradise,
the first breath of paradise is
the first taken alone.