Shronedarragh, Co. Derry – 2nd Prize 2023

It was decided we should see ‘the turf’.

Our cousin Barry didn’t understand the fuss

but knew better than to ask more than once

and led us out the side door, past the barn

and milking sheds, the dogs watching us disappear,

to the rain-wet road, cottages, chimney smoke.

I asked about school – grand – and football;

soccer, I corrected – he played keeper.

A gate opened to a tractor track and unfurling

wide, wet land. Barry ran ahead

then waited, looking back at foreigners

lifting feet around sky-filled puddles.

Let’s run! he said. I don’t know why but we did,

forgot the muck and ran, leaping ditches

and pools, slush racing underneath,

field to field, cattle ground, marsh,

following the boy in a kind of pilgrimage.

Then he stopped. Piled in stacks, tufty

slabs of darkness: fresh turf, cut neat.

There. Now. So, he said. We regarded it.

Rows and columns of winter heat.

Along the trench of dug ground,

excavation points: cuts, jabs, parcels of air

in the special dirt. Just as it was, I wondered,

when Mum as a girl delivered ‘cold tea’.

The sky was turning pink, our breaths suspended

in vapour. Cows shuffled to grassier clumps.

Rising wind. Supper would be going cold,

Barry said, so we turned around.