Poetry in motion for The Storms Journal.

Think you’re escaping and run into yourself.

The longest way round is the shortest way home.

There are many ways to get a new view on an old town.

Turn your head and look from the outside in.

Catch a different view to the one you’re used to.

In Dublin, it’s the Port the light lifts first.

Eastwards on the horizon line, where heaven and earth meet.

It might not be heaven, but there’s moments where

it’s not quite earth either.

An other world that feels like an underworld at other hours but not this one.

This is liquid gold with the promise of a new day in this ancient modern city.

The edge of the Ancient East.

Ireland, Éireann, Hibernia, Eriú. The Abundant One.

Our land, named Eriú for the Celtic goddess betrothed to The Sun.

The place where the River Liffey meets the Irish Sea

has been a gateway for over a thousand years.

The site of countless first sights and farewells.

You might be fresh off the boat or born and bred by Old Mr Brennan

Northsider or Southsider

Banker or brewer

a city on the rise

With planes, cranes and cycle lanes

A place of colour and culture, where

we are all one but thank Christ we’re not the same.

In this city possessed by character, in the Docks, personality reigns.

Here, if you don’t have a nickname, you could sink without a trace.

It’s how the port foreman knew you to hire you.

Your term of endearment gave you your terms of service,

paid your wages and fed your family

And so there came to be the name as survival mechanism.

Eat the Babby. Rubber Legs, Granny Farrell, Fatser Curry.

Baldy McAuley, Bronco Byrne, I could go on but

This is where a rocker was a docker for a short while and

Ah Philo, we deeply miss you.

The shy poet who broke down heartbreak odes

to the city holds a special place in Port history.

He who’d laugh and joke and smoke and later on the boat cry over you, Dublin.

He whose magic still flows through this city, through Grafton Street and Derby Square,

He who still, at sea with flowing hair we think of you, Phil, in Dublin.

Over the years she’s seen it all.

Pirates and blaggards, supertankers and superhumans, sea ferries and sea fairies,

fin folk, mermaids, selkies, this is Ireland after all and to get on alright here,

it’s not just a nickname you’ll need

but a healthy sense of belief in more than the eye can see.

Call it Irish optimism if you like but a nation of saints and scholars,

poets and storytellers can’t afford to be cynical.

Want proof? Our fervent belief in the daily appearance of the sun.

We’re at our most optimistic when it comes to the weather

but whether or not she shows her golden face

we still somehow seem to feel her warmth shining on our days.

And maybe this is how, when we’re at our best,

A certain light shines from us.

From Ireland. Eireann. Eriú.

This abundant land betrothed to the sun.

A day in Dublin can do that to you.

Put things in perspective.

Make you see that the end of one thing is always the beginning of another.

And at dusk, at day’s end,as the sun sets over the west

having crossed all of life in this raucous city,

in the Port, there’s peace.

The ancient ocean of pink and blue, topaz and cerulean is a mirror image

of the wide sapphire sky.

Terns dance across the shimmering surface of the sea,

glimmering fireflies light life up all the way to the peaks of the mountains

that watch over the Bay.

City sentinels stand tall. Silent, for now.

Any day in Dublin can be beautiful.

Just adjust your view is all.