Timoleague Abbey, built about 1300,
replaced an older one.
Men and women have sought out God
at this location nearly a thousand years.
Can I piggyback on their piety?
Is it true some places have a thin crust
between the spirit world and secularity?
Are there really holy places?
The side of a mountain, a young man,
a bush burning but not consumed –
a curiosity worthy of investigation.
Who would expect a voice,
Take off your shoes, this is holy ground?
When did it become holy? Years before
or with the conflagration of the shrub?
Wasn’t the reason it was holy simply
the presence of the living God?
Does that make golf courses holy,
the ones where folk say they feel as close
as they woud in church on Sundays?
I’m sitting in a car, riding from Timoleague
to Cork, ready to get on a train to Dublin,
three planes to get back home.
And God’s there when I seek him.
All of it is holy ground, every place is thin.