Amy Bagan

1.
Picture without picturing: we're all blind
And always have been, not as metaphor—
Image-ination Out! So, never mind
Those blank slates seeming to reflect the core

Of our existence: the unseen is here
For us to hear. Odysseus when lost at sea
Sighed for the god of the West Wind to steer
Him home. The gnawing hunger of his ear

Seized Zephyrus who quit his lovesick games
To feed him breathlings. But the wound in sound
Heaved through the waves, and it's Poseidon's curse we blame
For ten more years of wandering around

Or thank for the ancient chorus that derives
From gods who envy us whom death makes feel alive.               


2.
What brought me here? The day my camera broke
I asked a stranger, "Is this the place the bard
has been?" Across the Burren's wastes he spoke

his voice immense while within the limestone's scarred
hide, small knots of flowers you could undo
lapped at seawater threads the sun had starred

in shot. "The Flaggy Shore below." He knew
the Heaney poem, "Postscript," by heart. My eyes
closed tight, a shade pulled low, sealed dark. He drew

wind's song of home from heaven's mouth to rhyme
it to the raw unwavering stems that thirst
in the erratics underfoot. The other side

hears everything, our company. Stone gives
of flesh, hands over from our lost what lives.