Thursday 30 November 2017

Why is bogland so hypnotic?

I've been searching for the perfect bogland picture all November, the month of souls, the month that particularly calls us to cherish the memory of our dead. 


I have become hypnotised. 


Why is bogland so hypnotic?

'The ground itself is kind, black butter'



pic courtesy m flynn    . 

'The bogholes might be Atlantic seepage.
The wet centre is bottomless.'


As with everything, the great poets know the answer.....


Bogland


by Seamus Heaney

We have no prairies
To slice a big sun at evening--
Everywhere the eye concedes to
Encrouching horizon,

Is wooed into the cyclops' eye
Of a tarn. Our unfenced country
Is bog that keeps crusting
Between the sights of the sun.

They've taken the skeleton
Of the Great Irish Elk
Out of the peat, set it up
An astounding crate full of air.

Butter sunk under
More than a hundred years
Was recovered salty and white.
The ground itself is kind, black butter

Melting and opening underfoot,
Missing its last definition
By millions of years.
They'll never dig coal here,

Only the waterlogged trunks
Of great firs, soft as pulp.
Our pioneers keep striking
Inwards and downwards,

Every layer they strip
Seems camped on before.
The bogholes might be Atlantic seepage.
The wet centre is bottomless.

pic courtesy l deery




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