Hitching Tuam Road
        for Seamus Heaney

I found a rhythm of walking today
on a rare Illinois road in Ireland,
hefting my pack between lifts
on a thirty-mile stretch till Tuam.

Beneath a crow teetering on a line
I stopped and on my thumb
balanced the wavering road, splitting
the oncoming from the passed.

The sun came to Maigh Eo today
dancing on car roofs, flecking the blue.
I turned my year tracing those gleams
into constellations, known and new,

I marked the year as the land,
one sun hitching open expanse.

(Co. Mayo, August 5th, 1995)

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Copyright © 2011 Joseph Lennon All rights reserved
from Fell Hunger
Salmon Poetry
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission