On the fourth of September you laid the foundation stone of our nesting palace. Our idyllic retreat, overgrown and singing sweetly of birdsong. I quite enjoyed our strolls, even before we trimmed up the brush and tamed the boglands, as it was home before we called it so simply because you breathed the air that lingered there. 

Though always your castle, what with your family crest lain upon the breast of the angel’s threshold, its rooms are now empty with life. Your children rejoice in the lake, as polished and cool as liquid silver. Your gardens still nourish neighbors and cultivate kinship in folk. Your guests come to dine before a feast with violets adorning their breast pockets. But it is no longer a place that feels like you in my heart.  

 I have not walked these grounds without you nor felt the liverworts and ferns, stretched out like fingers to caress my calves. Yet this morning I went wandering just the same only to find that you’ve been in wait. You’ve become the drops of dew, collecting on the foothills from fog rolling inland in the twilight; the blooming and the yellowing of the horse chestnut tucked away in your deep Connemara woodlands. 

And so I will build once more for you your very own castle in the ground in which you may sleep forever among the birdsong and the moss underfoot.