we’ll follow a path
through silver birch and pine
listen for the shepherd
whistling to her flock of pregnant ewes
look for grasses
herbs trampled under their hooves
catch the scent
of crushed chamomile lavender thyme
from the mossy mountainside
drink the river’s source
© Jane Clarke, first published in All The Way Home (Smith Doorstop, 2019)
Picture 12942742, painting by Ivan Shishkin, 1881, image copyright Mary Evans / Pictures Now Collection
Jane Clarke grew up on a farm in Co. Roscommon and now lives in Glenmalure, Co. Wicklow. Her second collection, When the Tree Falls (Bloodaxe Books, 2019), was longlisted for the 2020 Royal Society of Literature’s Ondaatje Prize and was shortlisted for the Irish Times Poetry Now Award 2020 and the Farmgate Café National Poetry Award 2020. Her first collection, The River (Bloodaxe Books, 2015), was shortlisted for the 2016 Royal Society of Literature’s Ondaatje Prize and in that year she also won the Hennessy Literary Award for Emerging Poetry and the inaugural Listowel Writers’ Week Poem of the Year Award. Her illustrated chapbook, All the Way Home (Smith Doorstop, 2019), responds to the Auerbach family archive of First World War letters and photographs represented by the Mary Evans Picture Library, London.