I walked for hours and thought
of you as though I were speaking to you,
and with each lunge forward on the path,
I felt the oaks and sunlight move to become
you. How absent I have been since this scarlet
scarf swept through me and changed
the feel of my hips, the way they rise
up into my tongue like fear or desire or the taste
of rust.As I walked, I carried the memory of your lips
in a blue balloon above the ground with its twigs
and periwinkles. Sure, springtime is enough
when I am in love. But otherwise green is
a paltry thing, subject to dismissal like the flies
blowing in the garden behind the fender
of my aunt's old junk car. Longing places spring
somewhere between ripening and loss.
If you could see the blue of this sky,
you would wonder why you've stayed away
so long and why the sticks of our bodies
resist and attract in the current of the brook.
Departure means nothing to the spine, but the water
flowing through saddens as the white tufts
of milkweed go vanishing into the shade.
Save some quiet for me. I have so much to say
to you when I return, so much to listen.

-- Joel Long

There is free internet in Europe!

And it lives at the Galway hostel. With free breakfast. Gratias deae.

I never know what day it is any more. Tuesday I was in Scotland. Yesterday I was in Northern Ireland, having the Best Day Ever -- a tour of the Antrim Coast, heading northwest from Belfast into Paradise. Tiny fishing glens and then the Corrick rope bridge over a hundred-foot drop into the Atlantic. I looked down, and laughed and laughed! Whee! Then to the Bushmills whiskey distillery, oldest in the world, to walk through yeast and barley smell into 1608 pub for tasting of Black Bush 12-year (yumm). Then -- oh. oh. The Giant's Causeway, miles of sheer drop into gentle slope, all basalt columns and sea crash and swooping cliffside, so green! so blue! so black and glistening, all foamy white. My ocean on the other side.

Last night, home and dry, Sidney and I sat in a pub for four hours with friends hours-old: Colleen from New Zealand, Lisa and Hannah from Canada. The band played "Tell Me Ma" for Sidney's birthday, and we danced with the drunks as the natives sang along. She is handsome, she is pretty, she is the belle of Belfast city...

Galway is all soft greys and misty rain, smells of ozone and cigarettes and tea.
Tomorrow we ferry to the Aran Islands, where we'll be until Saturday afternoon.

Sending all my love across the dear Atlantic.